


Running Among Wolves

by SereneCalamity



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Mortal Instruments (Movies), The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Alpha!Jace, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Werewolves, F/M, Family Feels, Pack Feels, Pack Mom!Clary, Teen Wolf inspired
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2018-10-16 12:51:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 32,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10571679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SereneCalamity/pseuds/SereneCalamity
Summary: Clary was one the only humans in Jace's pack, but she was so much more than a human to the werewolves, especially to the Alpha. Werewolf AU. Clace.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys :)  
> So this is majorly Teen Wolf inspired.  
> I hope you guys enjoy it.  
> Disclaimer : I do not own any of the characters, barely the idea. LOL.

Sometimes Clarissa Fray wondered how she ended up here.

Running through the woods, her clothing shredded and blood dripping down her arms and her legs burning, chased by men who were carrying guns that were loaded with bullets made of silver and laced with wolfsbane. Her hair was flying out behind her, a completely tangled mess around her face, thanking God that she had worn a good pair of running shoes that afternoon when she had been hauled off on yet another one of these adventures.

And with werewolves at her side.

Just three years ago, she was in high school, flirting with the hot, dark haired guy who sat behind her in Chemistry and was on the basketball team. She had plans to go off to University in the city, she wanted to get away from the town she had grown up in, get away from the memories of her abusive father and away from the cattiness and drama of teenager-hood. Her mother had planned to move to New York, in with her boyfriend, Luke Greymark, who she had been seeing for over two years and had actually been in a relationship with before she had met Clary's father. Her best friend, Simon Lewis, was far too smart for his own good and was planning on getting out of the township as well for some sort of forensic science degree.

They had even made it out of the tiny town, moving into a bigger township about an hour and a half away, a few weeks after they finished school. It was just meant to be a temporary thing, they had both been accepted into Universities across the country, and until they had to leave in four months time, they wanted to get some time away from their parents and their high school companions. They got a dingy little apartment together, found part time jobs, and everything went well for all of three months. Simon started dating a pretty girl, a girl that Clary got on well with, and things seemed as though they were getting serious. Clary was actually getting a bit worried that maybe Simon was going to put off his plans for University for a year, just so he could spend time with her, but then there was the accident.

It had been a late night, Clary and Simon had been coming home from a movie when suddenly the car was spinning out of control, and they were skidding across the empty street directly toward a power pole. Simon's side of the car had taken the brunt of the attack, and he hadn't been conscious when suddenly a creature that Clary thought was a hallucination had appeared on his side of the car and roared. It's eyes were glowing, and there was a sickly smell that assaulted her senses, and she wasn't able to even scream when suddenly it was frightened and taking off into the dense woods. At the time, Clary had absolutely no idea how Isabelle Lightwood and her angry looking friends had showed up only minutes after the accident, and hunkered down over Simon's twisted body in the driver seat. Clary had been in shock, barely able to process what was going on, all she could see was Simon, covered in blood, looking broken and barely breathing.

Isabelle had been pleading with the furious looking golden man that Clary had seen around a few times. Clary couldn't understand what was happening, the dark haired man that Clary was pretty certain was Isabelle's brother, had hauled her out of the passenger side of the car. The next day she would realize that he had actually ripped off the door car and pulled her out, but at the time she was just staring dumbly at Simon. She didn't get what Isabelle kept saying, asking the golden haired man to save Simon—he didn't _look_ like any kind of doctor. They were having some argument, and Clary just kept mumbling Simon's name over and over again, trying to reach out for her friend, and the golden haired man had looked at her. His expression was torn, but it must have been a combination of Isabelle's begging and the look on Clary's face that made up his mind.

Then his eyes flashed red and suddenly his face morphed into something maybe similar to the creature she had originally seen, and there were a whole lot of sharp teeth, and then Clary blacked out.

 _That_ was how she ended up here.

A shot rang out beside her ear and Clary instinctively ducked her head, but kept right on running. She heard a growl nearby, but there had been no hisses or howls of pain, so she assumed that the shot hadn't hit anyone around her. They just had to get a little bit further, just a few more minutes of running and they would meet the rest of their pack, then they would be safe.

Another shot sounded off, this one a whole lot closer to Clary's face, and she felt her fast beginning to rabbit even faster, and then suddenly there was a vicious roar and her body acted automatically, throwing herself to the ground in a roll. The rest of the pack had heard the gunshots and must have run toward them. The were's around her would have heard them coming but it's not as though they had time to tell her.

That was fine, though, Jace Herondale's roar had been enough to notify her of their presence.

She hit the ground just in time for Jace, Alec Lightwood and Jem Carstairs leap past her. Their eyes were glowing, their faces wolfed out, all three of them snarling. With their Alpha and two other pack mates at their sides, Simon, Isabelle, Max Lightwood and Maia Roberts spun around to face the hunters that were advancing on them. Magnus Bane wasn't too far behind them, blue magic swirling around his fingers and his eyes glowing gold, a similar gold to the beta wolves. He looked down at her for a moment, glancing her over, and she gave him a short nod, assuring him that she was okay, before turning back to face the hunters.

The hunters exploded through the tree line and came to a stop when they saw six werewolves and a warlock, rather than just three were's and a human like they had thought they had been chasing.

"This isn't your territory, Alpha," the hunter in the front spat out at him, waving his gun around, the men on either side of him glaring at the eight in front of them. Clary got to her feet, trying to control her breathing, wiping her hands on her jeans. Even her human senses could hear more people approaching behind them, but from the way the were's weren't panicking, she guessed that it wasn't a threat.

"No, but it is mine," Will Herondale appeared behind them, along with his second in command, Bartholomew Velasquez, close behind him. "And you're not welcome here." The hunter in front, who was clearly the one in charge, clenched his jaw and glared between all of the were's.

"Maybe you should have thought about who was going to come after you if you attacked one of ours," the hunter snapped. Clary glanced from side to side, noting the way that Simon and Max were scenting the air. She wasn't sure what they could smell, but whatever it was made them give one another strange looks. Alec seemed to be able to sense the same thing, because his frown deepened.

"If one of mine attacked one of your hunters, it was because they were a threat," Will stated, his voice taunt as he tried to keep his anger under control. "However, none of my pack has attacked anyone, human or otherwise, and so there is no reason for you to be here."

"It was my little sister!" The hunter on the left yelled out, and Clary stepped to the side to look over Jace's shoulder to look at the man talking. Jace turned his head to the side slightly to look back at her, before returning his gaze steadily at the three hunters. The man on the left seemed uncertain, and the more she stared at him, the younger he looked—maybe even younger than her. "And it was only a couple of miles from here! It was on _your_ territory!"

"I'm sorry for your loss," Will's words weren't exactly sincere, but then again, these three men had trespassed onto a packs territory with the intent of harming one of his own, so he couldn't exactly be blamed. "But it was not us. Now, no one has been harmed, and given the circumstances, I'm going to let this slide." Clary's eyebrows raised as she looked over at Will, who's eyes were burning red. It was a surprisingly calm decree for the man, given how quick tempered and quite frankly, violent, he could be. She guessed that Jace had been the one to plant the idea in his head, subtly letting him know that attacking these men wouldn't lead anywhere good.

"The police declared it an animal attack," the first hunter was speaking again. "We all know what that's code for."

"I will look into it," Will snapped, his red eyes flashing and his fangs beginning to show. "But it was _Not. Us_." Bat shifted behind his Alpha, clearly coiled tightly, reading to lash out if given the signal. "If I so much as smell you around the borders of my territory, there will be problems." The hunters knew they were outnumbered, and they knew that they were getting let off lightly, so the three of them began backing off.

"Follow them," Jace grunted as he looked over at Max and Alec, and Will jerked his head at Bat, who nodded, and took off after the two other beta's.

"Well, that was fun," Magnus sung out, his eyes fading back to their usual green-gold colour and the blue swirling magic around his hands disappeared into thin air. "But it's almost three in the morning and I'm more than ready for my beauty sleep."

"Gonna take more than sleep to fix that face," Clary smirked and nudged Magnus in the side. Magnus rolled his eyes at her and grinned, throwing an arm around her shoulder. Clary winced at the sudden contact and he frowned at her. "Don't worry, just landed wrong," Jace's head whipped around, his eyes narrowing at her as he looked her over. Now that the adrenaline was starting to subside, Clary could feel the sting of the cuts on her arms and one on her cheek, and her shoulder was throbbing. Jace was practically glaring over at her, and she knew that he wanted to reach out and drag away her pain with his powers, but he restrained himself, knowing she would just pull away.

"Let's go," Will stated, and the were's relaxed, clearly the hunters far enough away that they felt safe to leave. Jace was still staring at Clary, and she stopped herself from making a face at him. Finally, he looked away, back at his cousin.

"You weren't surprised about the attack on his sister," Jace's voice was low, almost a growl. "What's going on?" Will sighed as he shoved his fingers through his hair.

"About a month ago we smelt a werewolf that must have been passing through," he admitted. "We knew that there was a dead body, the sheriff told us, and we went by and saw the girl. The were's scent was all over it." Jace's eyes were sparking red, and Clary knew that he was wondering why Will just let it go without telling them, even though Will was within his rights to do so since Jace's territory was several hours away. Will knew that was what Jace was thinking as well, because he continued with a sigh. "Look, it was right on the outskirts of our territory, we didn't smell the were until the body was discovered and he was long gone. We followed the scent for as long as we could, but they disappeared."

"Alright, well, you'll contact me if you need to?" Jace raised an eyebrow and nodded.

"Are you heading home? Or did you want to spend another night?" Will asked as he and Jace started walking ahead of the were's, Jem and Simon nudging up against Clary's side, both of them looking over her scratches and her shoulder, the pair of them concerned.

"We're going to start home," Jace replied. "Our things are all packed up and Jordan has booked us into a hotel about two hours away, on the way home." There was a rush of footsteps and suddenly Bat, Max and Alec were running back toward them. They were almost near the main road, where there cars were parked, and when they got out of the woods, Clary tipped her head back to look up at the bright moon that was shining down on them.

"When are we seeing you around again, huh?" Bat came up beside Clary with a grin. She grinned back at him as she dropped her chin to face him.

"I don't know, Bat. But you've got my number, you know how to reach me." It was playful flirting, it happened whenever they were together, both of them dancing around each other even though nothing was ever going to happen. "Although don't call me tonight, or tomorrow. I'm so fucked, I'm pretty sure I'm going to sleep for the next twenty-four hours."

"Alright, girl," Bat leaned in to give her a kiss on the cheek. The growl from behind him made Clary roll her eyes, and Bat made a face as though it didn't bother him, but Clary felt him pull away a little quicker, his posture stiffening. Jace stood there, his eyes flashing a warning red at Bat, who gave a respectful nod and then walked off.

"Oh yeah, you're a big, bad Alpha," Clary rolled her eyes again as Jace stared at her. She sighed, the remaining adrenaline in her body leaving her body. "Are we done here? I'm ready to get to that hotel room." Jace nodded shortly, looking over his shoulder toward the rest of his pack who was saying goodbye to Will and Bat.

"We're off," Jace grunted, his voice quiet but his pack all quickly finishing their goodbyes and walking toward their Alpha. Jace put his hand at the small of Clary's back, directing her toward where their cars were parked.


	2. Chapter 2

They were piled into three cars, heading out of Will's territory and back toward their own. Will was Jace's cousin, four years older than him, and he was an Alpha of his own pack. His pack, however was a lot smaller than Jace's, with only four of them in total. Bat had reported back to Will that there were hunters sniffing around their territory, and so he had called his cousin and the rest of his pack to come and back them up. It had been three days, and they had spent time at Will's home, which was large and smelt like the ally pack, but it was beginning to get a bit stifling. They were feeling a bit overwhelmed, being surrounded by scents that weren't just _their_ pack. That was why before they had gone out to confront the hunters, Jace had told Jordan Kyle to pack up their things and book them into a hotel that was on their way home, so that they could spend a night with just their own pack.

Clary fell asleep on the way to the hotel, laying down in the backseat of Jace's car with her head on Max's lap, Alec in the front seat, leaning back against the head rest. Simon, Isabelle and Magnus were following in Isabelle's car, and Jem and Maia were bringing up the rear. When they arrived at the hotel, Max woke Clary up, and she let out a groan as she shifted and her shoulder throbbed. Jace turned in the front seat, his eyes settling on her arm before looking back at her face.

"Don't even think about it," she muttered as she got out of the car. Werewolves healed fast, and Magnus helped them all heal even faster with a flick of his fingers. If she was hurt badly, she would accept their help, let them drag the pain out of her body with their powers, but a lot off the pain she would deal with herself. With the way they lived, it was her way of remembering that she was human and holding onto it. The werewolves were just as tired as Clary, they were dragging their feet and rubbing their eyes, only Jace looking strong and alert in the front of the pack.

"You wake up my kid and I'll kick your ass," Maia grumbled from behind them as they reached the door for the hotel room that Jordan Kyle had booked them into. It wasn't the flashiest of hotels, but it looked clean and good enough for the night. Jace tapped his fingers against the door, careful not to knock too loudly. There was some movement behind the door, and all the were's could hear the two heartbeats and breathing inside, both of them familiar to the pack. Jordan opened the door, his eyes blurry and half lidded with sleep. He smiled when he saw them, stepping aside to let the were's inside and then reaching out to hug Maia.

"Is Sammy asleep?" Isabelle asked as she looked over toward the port-a-cot in the corner of the room.

"She only just went back to sleep," Jordan said quietly.

"Like I said," Maia repeated, raising her eyebrows as she looked around at her pack. "You wake up my kid and I'll kick your ass." The room that Jordan had hired was probably the biggest one that the hotel provided, with two queen sized beds, a single in the corner and a couch running along one wall next to the TV. The pack had spent the last three days around other werewolves, and they were exhausted, and smelt like another pack. Tonight was about resting and surrounding themselves with one another.

"Does anyone want to shower before I use the bathroom?" Clary asked softly. There were shakes of peoples heads and she nodded, picking up the first aid kit Jordan must have brought in when he had come in and walked into the adjoining bathroom. She doubted that many of the were's were going to actually shower before going to bed, although Isabelle might. She didn't shut the door all of the way, leaving it with a slight crack between the door and the frame, and then looked at her reflection in the mirror. There were a couple of deep scratches on her arms that must have been from the branches, and she was probably going to have a bruise on her shoulder. She sighed as she pulled off her shirt, careful as she inched it over her right arm.

When she had managed to pull the shirt off and drop it to the ground, Jace was standing behind her, the door now firmly shut.

"That's going to be ugly in a few hours time," he grunted as he nodded at her shoulder.

"I'll be fine," Clary replied as she looked properly at the bathroom mirror, able to get a better view now that she just had a bra on. There were a few more scratches on her stomach, but none of them as deep as on her arms. She ignored Jace as she dampened the corner of a flannel and started to wipe down the dirt on her arms and around the outside of the scratches. Every movement she made with her right hand made her wince, even though she was trying to hide it from the Alpha. Jace watched her for a few minutes, his eyebrows pulled together, before he stepped forward. "Jace..." she began warningly.

"Just let me," Jace said, his voice even but his eyes were practically begging her. He had clearly wanted to do it earlier, but had held back because he knew that she could handle it. It was more because _he_ couldn't handle seeing her in pain. She sighed and relented, leaning back against his chest.

One of the many powers that werewolves, particularly Alpha's, had was that they could drain others pain, take it into their own body because pain in their bodies faded quickly. He was warm and sturdy, and he placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, and his veins turned a dark colour as he drained the pain from her body, taking it on himself. Her mind felt a little light headed, and she pulled away after a moment, even though she liked the feeling of his body against hers.

"That's enough," Clary told him. Jace nodded, respecting her wish, although he then reached past her for the first aid kit. Clary turned around to face him, leaning against the vanity unit. Jace's eyes glanced over her torso before they focused on the scratches on her arms. He took out a couple of disinfectant wipes and began to clean them. Clary was used to the Alpha feeling the need to look after her, as the only human in the pack other than Jordan, but there had always been something more when it came to the two of them.

"Move your hair," he murmured as he looked at the cut on her neck. Clary shifted her hair over her shoulder and tilted her head to the side, exposing her throat to him. It wasn't always the smartest idea to show such blatant submission to a werewolf, especially to an Alpha, but he was her pack, and she trusted him with her life. Jace cleaned the cut out and then bandaged up the two deeper cuts on her arms, the rest of them fine to leave exposed. Clary didn't move after he had finished, and he put down the wipes on the bench, resting his hands gently on her arms, running them up and down. "You okay?" He muttered.

"I'm fine, Jace. You and I both know that I've had worse," Clary shrugged, and then tried to cover up her wince as she jostled her shoulder. Jace let his head dip forward, touching his cheek to hers, taking in a deep breath. His nose dipped down lower, his breath caressing over her neck as he reached her shoulder. Clary knew that what he was doing was instinctual—he was touching her along where Bat had touched her earlier, undoubtedly trying to smother the scent of the other werewolf. He kept on rubbing his hands up and down her arms, his lips touching the curve of her shoulder, scent marking her. When he seemed satisfied that she smelt like him, he stepped back. Clary gave him a tired smile before pulling her shirt back over her head and walked out of the bathroom.

Jordan and Maia were cuddled together on the single bed beside the port-a-cot, and Samantha Kyle was fast asleep, her thumb in her mouth and the hand clutching a little stuffed wolf that Clary had brought for her just after she had been born. Clary walked over to the cot, leaning over the edge and pressing a kiss against the little girls olive skinned cheek, nuzzling her nose against the soft skin. Sammy was a werewolf, her eyes flashing gold when she was about three months old. Thankfully her senses weren't tuned enough that she would wake up when there were other people in the room, but she still craved the touch and scent of the others in her pack, just like the other were's. Sam made a snuffling noise, following Clary's movements before the older girl pulled away.

Max and Alec were sitting on the couch, looking less tired than they did before, both of them obviously feeling better being in a safe place, surrounded by their pack, their knees touching together. Simon, Isabelle and Jem were cuddled together on one of the queen sized beds, arms all wrapped around each other, Isabelle fast asleep and Simon and Jem were on their way there as well. Magnus was on the other bed, and Clary let out a sigh of relief as she crawled next to him, resting her head on the pillow beside him.

"You want me to fix that up?" Magnus murmured to her sleepily, touching her shoulder.

"I'm fine," Clary mumbled. "I just want to sleep." Magnus nodded, helping her get under the blankets and then rolling over. Two of the lamps in the room were still turned on, but it was somewhere around four in the morning now, and she was most definitely going to fall asleep within minutes.

"You two need to get some sleep," she heard Jace say to Max and Alec as he came back into the lounge.

"We can take first watch," Alec replied.

"I'll take the first watch," Jace answered and Clary rolled her eyes from where she was burrowed underneath the blankets. Typical Jace, trying to take everything on himself.

"No, man," Max piped up. "You get some sleep. We'll wake you up in a few hours." She wasn't too sure what was happening on the other side of the room, but the lights were soon turned off, and she felt the bed dip behind her. A moment later, an arm was slid around her waist, pulling her close against Jace's body. The Alpha flattened his hand against her lower stomach, pressing his lips against the back of her neck. Her eyes closed, enjoying the way his fingers rubbed circles lightly against her skin and his nose dipped into her hair.

She fell asleep, feeling warm and loved by her pack.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a mix up in the upload , sorry ! I uploaded chapter 4 last time instead of chapter 3 , so have just gone through and updated that ... Sorry !

When Clary woke up, she was warm, but she instantly knew that it wasn't Jace behind her. She twisted her neck to look over her shoulder and saw Magnus fast asleep still. When she turned back to face forward, Max was the one sleeping there, tucked back against her and their legs tangled together. The teenager looked even younger when he was fast asleep, his dark hair flopping over her forehead, and Clary reached out sleepily with one finger, tucking a lock of unruly hair behind his ear. Jem was in the bed next to them, fast asleep with Isabelle, and Maia and Jordan were still in the far one, with Sammy in the cot next to them. Sammy was awake now, but she seemed to be content with playing with the soft toys in her cot. Simon was sitting on the couch near the door, flipping through a book.

"Hey," Clary's voice was barely a rasp, but Simon instantly looked over at her. She had no doubt that he had heard the exact change in her heart beat when she had woken up, but he probably thought that she was going to go back to sleep. "Where's Jace and Alec?" She asked, making sure to keep her voice quiet to hopefully not disturb anyone else in the room.

"They went out a couple of hours ago, said they would be back soon," Simon shrugged a shoulder. "I'm sure if you text him, he would come running," he smirked at her.

"Shut up," Clary rolled her eyes, not in the mood for his teasing this early in the morning. Although when she squinted at the clock on the wall, it looked as though it was nearly ten o'clock, but after the late night that they had had, it was still far too early to be awake now. She dropped her head back to the pillow, taking in a deep breath through her nose and gathering in the familiar scents of the people—the pack—around her. Maybe she didn't have the super senses of the were's around her, but she definitely understood the comforts of being surrounded by her family.

The next time Clary woke up, she and Magnus were two of the only ones asleep, other than Maia, who was snoring softly. The front door to their motel room was partially open and Clary could hear low tones from outside, so she guessed some of their friends were out there. The shower was running and the door was shut, and she heard a giggle from inside. She raised an eyebrow and shifted until she was sitting up in bed and Jace came into the room.

"Isabelle and Simon," he stated gruffly as he nodded toward the shut door.

"Oh, lovely," Clary wrinkled her nose and the corner of Jace's lips twitched in a smirk before he sat down on the edge of the bed. "What time did you get back?"

"Just now," he responded, his voice still quiet. "Jem and Max have gone to a diner down the road to get food, and Jordan is letting Sammy crawl around in the park out the back before she needs to get in the car for the drive back." Clary nodded as she rubbed her eyes, waking up properly and blinking a couple more times. She pushed back the blankets and shifted forward until she reached the end of the bed, resting her feet on the floor. The shower had turned off, and Clary could hear the hum of Isabelle and Simon's voices as they spoke quietly to each other. The door opened shortly after, Isabelle wrapped in a towel that really didn't cover all that much, and Simon wearing a pair of sweatpants.

"I thought I could smell you," Isabelle stated with a curl of her lip as she looked over at Jace. Clary's eyebrows went up as she looked over at the Alpha, wondering what had invoked the look of distaste on Isabelle's face. "You smell like a morgue."

"A morgue?!" Clary's eyebrows pulled together. "What were you doing at a morgue?!"

"There were just a couple of things that Alec and I wanted to look over," Jace gave a one shouldered shrug as he stood up. "Wake them up," he nodded at the two that were still sleeping. "Jem and Max will be back soon with food, and then we can head back home." Isabelle looked like she wanted to push Clary's question about the morgue, but she just pursed her lips together and gathered up some clothes, going back into the bathroom to get dressed. Clary frowned at Jace, and he stood up, standing over her.

"Everything's fine," he told her briefly, his hand cupping her neck and brushing his thumb across one side of her jaw before he nodded toward Magnus and Maia. "Wake them up."

Jace and words weren't exactly friends. Isabelle joked on almost a daily basis that he was emotionally constipated, even though anyone who knew Jace knew that he felt things deeply, he just had a different way of showing it. Clary hadn't exactly been scared of Jace when she had first become involved in this supernatural world that was now her life, but she had definitely been wary of him. He seemed to glare at everyone, and was overly possessive when it came to certain things, and a lot of the time he just spoke in short, gruff sentences. But the more she got to know him, the more she realized just how much he cared.

While Simon hadn't actually been bitten by a rogue Alpha and he had indeed been turned by Jace, a few days after the accident when Clary was actually able to process what was going on, Isabelle had explained that it definitely had seemed like the rogue's intention to do just that. They had tried to find the rogue, but to no avail. It had taken Simon a few months to properly adapt, and sometimes Clary disagreed with the methods of learning that Jace had, and her and Jace often got into arguments about them.

She didn't understand the pack dynamics at the time, how everyone would just fall in line with whatever Jace would say. Even when there were disagreements—which happened frequently, given how strong willed his pack was—at the end of the day, they would follow Jace's lead. Even Simon. When Clary had asked Simon to explain to her what it was, he said he wasn't too sure how to phrase it, it was just this pull inside him, this need to follow his Alpha. But the longer she was there, the more she could see that Jace only wanted what was best for his pack, and that extended to her.

Jem had become a werewolf in a similar way to Simon. Forcibly. When he was fifteen, he was attacked when coming home from school after a late night basketball practice. It was about a year and a half after Simon had been turned, and Max had been the one to scent the boy and the change out at school. He had only been fourteen at the time, and had gone back to his Alpha, telling Jace what he had smelt. Jace confronted Jem, who still hadn't realized what had happened, but knew that something was definitely wrong. Alec and Jace had investigated the area where he had been bitten, and the scent there was the same one from when Simon and Clary's car had been attacked. Jace had helped Jem adjust, and when his parents had moved out of town a year ago, he had moved in with Jace.

Alec, Isabelle and Max had come to Shadow Hills with Jace four years ago. Both of their parents were beta's, and their Alpha had been an older werewolf, Jeremiah Brother. But given the strong tie that they had to Jace, especially since he had come to live with them after his pack had been killed, they had chosen to follow him. Max was only young, just twelve, but his wolf clearly recognized Jace as his Alpha and so his parents had filled out all the necessary _human_ paperwork to allow him go. Pack was family, and they knew that Jace would protect Max at all costs, and look out for his best interests.

Maia had already been in the town when they had moved in, and she had been with Jordan since they were in high school. He was human, and knew that she was a werewolf, and accepted that about her, and she had been more than happy to become part of Jace's pack. The township itself was still technically Herondale territory, even though he hadn't been there for several years, so any werewolves in the area had the choice to either join his pack or leave. There had been a couple of other werewolves in the town as well, both of whom left shortly after Jace arrived.

Magnus was a powerful spark, who had been happy floating between packs and just making his own way. But once he had met Alec, the pair had practically been joined at the hip. It was a similar sort of connection to what Simon and Isabelle had, given their relationship had just become more cemented once he had become a werewolf, and also Maia and Jordan. After they had gotten closer, Jace had told her that his parents had been the same. It was their wolf half, completely comfortable with the other person, becoming anchored to them, stabling the two halves of themselves. Clary wanted to ask if Jace had ever thought he had met someone like that, but she knew he had a bad past when it came to relationships, or at least, one terrible relationship.

"Hey, look at who it is," came a soft voice from the doorway, and Clary looked up to see Jordan standing there, Sammy in his arms. "It's Aunty Clary." Clary smiled as she got up from her spot on the bed. "You mind holding her while I go to the bathroom?" Jordan asked, already passing the little girl over.

"I think Izzy's just in there right now," Clary replied as she took Sammy and nuzzled her nose against the little girls. Sammy giggled as their noses bumped together, patting her hand against Clary's cheek as she gurgled something unintelligible. Isabelle came out of the bathroom and Jordan disappeared inside. "What do you say that we wake up mummy, huh?" Sammy giggled again as she and Clary walked over to where Maia was stirring, unaware of Jace watching them from the doorway.


	4. Chapter 4

Clary was tired when she dragged herself out of bed at five thirty in the morning. They had all gotten home yesterday afternoon, but they had gone back to the Herondale house out on the edge of the town. Most of the pack lived out there, actually— _all_ of them did, except Clary needed her own space. She still had a bedroom that was pretty much her's in the sprawling home, and she spent more time there than in her own home, but it was still nice to have her own space. Clary went out for a run, the sun coming up and lighting her way as it got closer to half past six, and when she got home, she stepped into her shower. Her shoulder was still aching, both Jace and Simon had not so subtly been touching her throughout the day yesterday, taking away her pain.

Technically she didn't need to be at work until around eight, but she had already needed to take a couple of days off, and she felt bad for leaving Helen Penhallow-Blackthorn in the lurch the past few days, even though there were other people to help her. Helen ran the best—and almost the only—daycare in the town, and so she had three other workers helping her out, but Clary was the one that helped her out the most, and that she was closest to.

The fact Helen was pregnant as well made her feel guiltier for leaving.

So Clary was out of her house, drinking a smoothie and tucking her singlet into the skirt that she was wearing, by seven. She got to the day care ten minutes later, pulling into the spot reserved for her, next to Helen's. She was the first one there, which worked for her. Gave her time to get everything ready before parents started dropping their kids off, get started on the accounting books and the wages that she should have had finished by yesterday. The place was tidy, and she couldn't help but grin as she looked around. It would only take minutes for this place to look like a tornado had swept through it once the kids started to arrive.

Twenty minutes after Clary had gotten in, Helen came in the front door, calling out her name. Clary grinned as she got up and walked out of the office, down the hallway and back into the main area.

"Hey, sweetie!" Helen gave her a wide smile, her blonde ringlets bouncing around her face. Her cheeks were a little rounder than they had been six months ago, and her stomach was pressing against the loose yellow dress that she was wearing. "I'm glad you're back!" Clary smiled at her, and then made a face as Helen gave her a once over. "You've got a couple of scratches, and that's not pretty looking," Helen pointed at Clary's shoulder which was on display because the red head was only wearing a singlet.

"Yeah, I fell wrong," Clary made a face. "It's fine." Helen pursed her lips for a moment before fluttering her eyelashes and pouting slightly, her intention clear. "No, it's fine, El. I'll heal like a normal human being." Helen continued to pout, making her blue-green eyes big and begging. "Oh for fucks sakes," Clary rolled her eyes. "You know, when you have a child who does this puppy dog routine on you, you're going to know all about this emotional blackmail that you force on me." Helen grinned and reached out. Her cool fingers touched against Clary's skin. There was a warm feeling, and when Clary looked down at her shoulder, she saw the bruise was gone. Helen dropped her arm and Clary moved her shoulder around, the pain gone as well. "Bloody faeries," Clary mumbled.

"You love me, really," Helen smiled. She opened her mouth to say something else, but there was noise outside, and a moment later, their first parent with her two children arrived.

Clary loved her job.

Yes, it wasn't where she thought that she would be, but a whole lot of things had changed in the past few years which had completely altered her reality. Clary had planned on going to University to get a Bachelor of Arts and then do an extra year on top of that so that she could get her teaching licence, and had been planning to get a job at a high school in the art department. She loved art, and she was good at painting, and the art room at her own high school had been her escape many times. The last couple of years of school were more about the kids who wanted to be there, the ones who weren't interested dropping out earlier, and those were the ones she wanted to help.

After Simon was bitten, things had gotten a little hazy for a while. She had considered going through with her original plan, to go to University. She had actually left and lasted almost two months in the city before she broke down, knowing that she couldn't leave behind her best friend, and the strange life he was now a part of. So she had packed up, filled in all the paper work to drop out of her course, and gone back to Shadow Hills. She was still liable for a portion of the loan that she had taken out since she had attended classes for a few weeks, but a month after she was back home, she got a letter in the post to say that it had been paid off.

Clary had been confused about it for almost a year, asking her mum if she had done it, or if she thought that her absentee father had done it out of some misguided attempt to bond. She even called the University, but they had just said that a transfer went through, they didn't ask for names or trace bank accounts. So she had chalked it up to some good Samaritan, until Max had let it slip that Jace had had his beta find out how much was owing. When she had confronted Jace about it, asking why he paid her loan, and he had just shrugged, not giving her anymore information. She had pressed it a few more times, but he had never given her a straight answer. She had dropped it after a while, because when Jace didn't want to talk about something, he wasn't going to discuss it when he was being pressed.

It had been a few months later, when her and Jace were sitting on the balcony outside his house, the beta's all disappeared into the woods in their wolfed out forms, that he admitted it was him. She already knew it was, but she didn't say that, just stayed quiet and let him continue. He said that he felt responsible for her coming back, for making her give up her future, and it was the least he could do. Clary told him it was her choice, but she knew he didn't believe that. The Alpha always took things on his shoulders, as though everything was his responsibility. With his past, it was understandable why he felt the need to punish himself, but the only person who really blamed him for things that happened was himself.

"You're back!" Came a squeal from Lucy Anderson, one of the girls who only came by in the mornings and the afternoon given she was five and going to school.

"I am," Clary grinned as the little blonde barreled into her legs, and then gave her a toothy smile.

"Can you paint with me? _Please_?" She cast a look over her shoulder before lowering her voice. "Helen painted with me the other day, but she's not as good as you." Clary laughed and nodded.

"Sure thing, sweetie. But after school, okay? We don't want you getting paint all over your clothes beforehand," Clary reasoned. "Why don't you put your bag and go outside?" Lucy nodded and trotted off. As the morning went on, more kids arrived, along with the other workers. There was only one other worker there who knew about the supernatural in town and why Clary had been out of town, and Lydia Branwell came over and asked if everything had gone okay.

Lydia and her grandmother, Charlotte Branwell, were like Clary. They were human, but they had gotten caught in the middle of the supernatural mess. Hardly any humans actually knew of the supernatural, except for people who were directly involved in it, or several supernatural hunters, like the ones they had chased out of Will's town. Lydia's fiancee had been killed by what the police had explained away as a 'freak animal attack', but had actually been a wendigo. Jace and his pack had found the creature who had attacked her fiancee and had killed it. Usually they didn't tell humans what they had found, except Lydia had been kicking up such a fuss, saying that the police were wrong and she was going to go to the wider media if no one looked further into it, and that would just draw more attention to the matter. So Jace had made a decision to tell her, and they hadn't regretted it.

This had all been before Clary and Simon had known them. By the time Clary and Simon had moved into the township, Lydia seemed to have a thing for Alec, which was a bit awkward, since the minute Clary met Alec, she knew that he was gay. Alec didn't come out until about a year and a half ago, letting Lydia down softly and starting up a relationship with Magnus.

"Yeah, it was just a couple of hunters," Clary murmured, making sure to keep her voice quiet. "I think that Jace will probably head back to talk to Will at some point, because there was an omega who killed someone and then disappeared."

"I'm glad they don't live close by," Lydia blinked, her eyebrows pulling together.

"Jace already had Alec, Jem and Max go out and check the boundary yesterday, and you know he'll be going out again today to make sure. But he doesn't seem on edge or anything, so I'm assuming they didn't pick up on anything," Clary replied. Lydia nodded, looking a little more relaxed at that, knowing that Jace would be on the edge the second he thought that something was wrong. "Anyway, I just want to look after our babies and have everything get back to normal."

"Honey," Lydia rolled her eyes and smiled as her eyes honed in on a little boy who looked like he was about start eating sand out the big double doors that were open. "Your life is never normal." The little boy was most _definitely_ going to start eating sand and Lydia made a face. "We'll catch up later, yeah?"

"Yeah," Clary flashed a smile before Lydia ran toward the sandpit.


	5. Chapter 5

"What are you doing here, Max?" Clary said as she stepped through the front door of her apartment, knocking it shut with her elbow behind her.

"Are you sure you're not a wolf?" Came an indignant cry from the lounge, and Clary laughed as she kicked off her shoes and dropped her handbag on the kitchen table as she walked toward the voice. "Seriously, how did you even know that I was here?"

"A girls gotta have some secrets," Clary grinned as she saw the boy stretched out on her couch, his shoes on the ground and his hands tucked behind his head. She noted that he was wearing a hoodie that originally belonged to Jace but that she had had in her possession for a while, so he was surrounding himself with scents of both his Alpha and her. "Don't tell me you've been here all day. You already missed a few days of school, you better have gone today or I'm gonna do worse than tell your parents, I'm gonna tell your Alpha, and he'll kick your ass." Max stuck out his lower lip in a pout.

"I haven't been here _all_ day," he began.

"Okay, so at what point did you skip out?" Clary dropped onto the couch beside his feet. Max moved into a seated position and shuffled over close to her, his arms rubbing against hers.

"After lunch," Max admitted, sounding like a little boy admitting to stealing a cookie from the cookie jar. Clary shook her head as she put her arm around his shoulders, pulling her against his side. Max instantly nuzzled against her, ducking his head and breathing in her familiar, comforting scent.

"What's going on?" She asked softly. Max was quiet for a long moment, and Clary stayed quiet with him. Clary lifted her hand to card her fingers through his hair, and she heard him sigh against her shoulder.

"It's making my head ache," Max mumbled. Clary frowned, and then looked over toward the dining room. There was a calender on the wall, and on the calender was marked that there was a full moon a few days away. Usually Max was good with handling his heightened senses, although he had been away from non-pack members for almost five days which meant his senses had become dulled with the familiarity of his pack, and then he was thrown back into school, surrounded by thousands of different scents and a mess of hormonal teenagers. It was hard for him, after being _just_ with pack, and then being back in school, especially just before a full moon.

"Okay, understandable," Clary nodded, continuing to stroke his hair. "But you need to talk to Jace about this, he's the one that can help you control it." Max made a snuffling noise under his breath and Clary sighed. "What are you doing here, babe? Why didn't you go home?"

"Jace and Alec had an argument this morning, and the whole place stinks and the tension is off the charts," Max replied. By 'stinks' he would be referring to the angry and bitter chemosignals that the were's could pick up on. Clary was glad she didn't have their highly tuned senses, because sometimes even she would swear that she could smell tensions running high between them all.

"Do you want to stay here tonight?" Clary offered. "But if you do, you have to go to school tomorrow—and I mean the _whole_ day. Or if you can't do the whole day, you have to tell Jace." Max lifted his head and nodded, his eyes flashing gold momentarily in appreciation. Clary smiled and kissed his forehead. "You're still going to have to tell Jace that you're here, or else he's going to wonder why you're not home." Max nodded again and Clary smiled at him. "Okay, I'm going to cook dinner. You want lasagna or chicken?"

It was a comfortable night in, it wasn't unusual for some of the pack to show up at Clary's house. Jem had teased her on a couple of occasions that she was like the 'pack mum', which Clary narrowed her eyes at and said that she was far too young to be. She was a source of comfort, and she was more than happy to be that person for the people that she viewed as closer than family, as pack. She made the sixteen year old go to bed at the same time as her, at ten, and said that if he got up to watch TV in the middle of the night then she would know, and wouldn't let him crash at her place again during the week.

Max listened, and he went to bed in the spare room next to Clary's. He did end up getting up part way through the night, but it was to climb in bed with Clary. She was sleepily aware of him slipping between her covers, and pulling one of her pillows between his arms and shoving his nose into it. He gave her space, sleeping on the other side of the bed, but just wanting to be close to her.

* * *

"Max's school called yesterday," Jace stated, his voice low as he walked up behind Clary. "He left after lunch and didn't come back."

"Interesting," Clary commented as she dropped to her knees and held out her arms to a Cassandra Davis, a three year old with big hazel eyes and brown hair that fell down her back. "Are you ready for nap time, baby cakes?" Cassie looked like maybe she was going to disagree with that, her face beginning to crumble. "And while you're getting ready to sleep, Helen is going to read stories to you. Sound fun?"

"I thought you weren't meant to compromise with them?" Jace noted with a raise of his eyebrow and Clary rolled her eyes over her shoulder at him as Cassie nodded and lifted up her arms for Clary to pick her up.

"Everyone's down for a little compromise when it comes to nap time," Clary responded. "Now, wait here. We need to take Cassie here—" Clary jiggled Cassie on her hip, who gave a sleepy smile, her eyes already beginning to droop. "Into the nap room, and then you and I can continue this lovely conversation." Jace narrowed his eyes at her, but stayed in the main room while Clary continued down the hallway. Helen and Lydia were in the big nap room, where the windows were open but the curtains were closed, and the cots were tidily lined up. A lot of the other children were already in their cots, some of them asleep, some of them following Helen's voice as she walked around the room, reading from a big, colourful book, her free hand resting on her rounded stomach. "You comfy?" Clary whispered to Cassie, who was snuggling down with the pink bunny rabbit her mother brought it in every morning with her because it was the only thing she would go to sleep with.

"I'll go out and watch the kids with Marly," Lydia said as she and Clary left the room. "You sort out things out with Jace." Clary nodded as they went back out to the main room. One of the part time girls was beginning the clean up, and Lydia continued through the back doors to where about ten or so kids who didn't have afternoon naps who were playing on the jungle gym outside. Jace wasn't in the play area, and Clary checked in on the kitchen, her face softening when she saw that he was beginning to fill their dishwasher.

"Thanks," she gave him a small smile as she joined him. There was a pile of dishes on the benches from lunch, which was always the worst part of Clary's day. She joined him, and they worked in silence as they rinsed down the plates and utensils and stocked the dishwasher. When they turned it on, Clary began running water in the sink to hand wash the remaining dishes.

"I can smell him all over you," Jace said shortly as he came up close behind her. Clary had long ago learnt that werewolves really had no respect for personal space, and as the years had gone by, she had found herself turning into quite a tactile person. Not to say that she didn't enjoy touch before, but it was definitely moreso now. "Is he at school today?"

"As far as I know," Clary replied, ignoring the slight warm prickle that spread over her skin as Jace leaned in close to her, his nose bumping against the back of her neck, his breath warm.

"Is it the full moon?" Jace asked softly.

"That's what he told me," Clary responded as she turned off the tap and turned around to look at Jace, forcing him to take a step back and put some breathing space between them. "He was just having a hard time. He's a sixteen year old kid, which is crappy enough, but with everything that's going on, he just said it was getting a bit much."

"And he came to you?" Jace's face was expressionless. "He text me last night to say he was staying with you, but at the time I didn't know that he must have been there throughout the day as well." She shrugged. Jace pursed his lips and then gave her a hint of what looked like it could be a smile. "Thank you."

"Hey, looking after wayward werewolves is a specialty of mine," Clary teased, reaching out to punch him lightly in the shoulder. Jace's lips twitched upwards, more of a smile now, and he shook his head.

"They love you," he murmured. "And they trust you." Clary felt her stomach tighten and the intense look in his golden eyes, and she dropped her eyes. Jace reached out, two of his fingers brushing against her cheek before they dipped underneath her chin and lifting her face to look directly at him. "Thank you," he repeated.

"They're my pack," Clary's voice hitched slightly. "That's what we do, right?" Jace's eyes and face were all soft as he smiled and leaned forward and pressed his kiss against her cheek, low so that it was almost against the corner of mouth.

"I'll see you tonight?" Jace phrased it as a question even though he already knew the answer. Friday nights were always pack nights out at the Herondale mansion, usually consisting of movies, a ton of junk food, and then the were's disappearing into the forest to run until they were tired and ready to collapse. Especially when it was a full moon tomorrow and they would have pent up energy that they needed to burn off.

"You know that I'll be there," Clary replied. "And don't be too hard on Max, or I'm gonna come after you for hurting my boy."

"You telling me how to treat my beta's?" Jace quirked an eyebrow at her, Clary staring back at him defiantly, not backing down.

"And if I am?" She retorted, although there wasn't any heat in her words. Jace parted his lips, looking as though he was going to say something, but then he pressed his lips together and just rolled his eyes.

"I'll see you tonight," he said, reaching out one last time to touch the curve of her neck, giving it a slight squeeze before turning around and leaving. Clary watched him go, putting her fingers to the junction between her shoulder and her neck, where he had just touched her. Not for the first time, she idly wondered that if she was a werewolf with their enhanced senses, what Jace smelt like when he was around her. She had heard Simon and Alec and Isabelle all saying that when they were around the people they loved, there was this sweet, warm smell that settled their inner wolf and made them think _home_.

She was no wolf, but she knew that was how _she_ felt, and sometimes she wondered if Jace felt the same.


	6. Chapter 6

The pack night went just like it usually did.

There was fighting between Simon, Max and Jordan over what movie they were going to watch, Jem and Alec wrestled over the comfy arm chair that they all knew Jace was going to kick people off because he always sat in it, and Isabelle burnt the dessert. Clary settled in the bean bag that she always sat in, between the arm chair and the couch, with Sammy sitting on her lap, a bottle clutched in her hands. The little girl had been playing with Maia, Alec and Simon most of the afternoon, her tiny fangs on display and her eyes flashing playfully, and she was most definitely ready to go to bed for the night.

"You looking forward to the full moon tomorrow, my darling girl?" Clary hummed against the girls soft, curly hair. Sammy popped the teat out of her mouth and tipped her head backwards, giving Clary a gummy, milky smile before shoving the bottle back in her mouth. Clary wasn't paying too much attention to what was going on around her, the whole room loud and rowdy while everyone got ready to settle down. Jace didn't say much either, he had glared at both Jem and Alec, who had grumbled under their breath and got off the La-Z-Boy, letting Jace sit there, and he had let one of his arms hand over the side of the arm chair, falling against Clary's shoulder and resting there.

"But I want to watch _Iron Man_!" Simon complained.

"I've already watched _Iron Man_ ten times more than I every wanted to," Isabelle shot back as she dragged a mattress into the centre of the room, in front of the couch.

"You've only seen it ten times," Simon argued.

"Exactly," Isabelle growled as she flopped down on the mattress, pulling a blanket over her. Simon continued to argue for _Iron Man_ , but Jordan had commandeered the remote and had scrolled right over it on the hard drive that they had plugged in.

"What about _Batman_?" Jem suggested.

"Ooh, the second one!" Maia piped up. "I'm always down for _The Dark Knight_." There were murmurs of agreement, Clary still not paying attention until Jace tapped her on the shoulder and raised his eyebrows in a question.

"Hit me with some Heath Ledger," Magnus smirked. "That beautiful, beautiful man."

"Sounds good," Clary agreed, Max and Simon now looking at her expectantly. That seemed to settle it, and Jordan turned the movie on. They had all eaten dinner before starting the movie, because whenever they were all there and ate in the lounge, the place would look like an absolute pigsty, given how much the werewolves ate. There were bags of chips being passed around and a cardboard box with donuts, and Clary knew that there was _still_ going to be a mess to clean up.

The lights were all turned off, and the movie started. This was Clary's favourite out of the _Batman_ trilogy, and she had lost count of the amount of times she had seen it, so she wasn't too focused on the screen, more on the little girl in her arms. Sammy finished off her bottle and Clary put it on the ground, rearranging the baby cub in her arms. Sammy buried her nose in Clary's shirt, folding her fingers in Clary's long hair that was falling over her shoulders, breathing in the scent of _pack_ and _home_ that Clary knew she carried. It didn't take her long before Sammy fell off to sleep, and Clary traced her fingers over the little girls cheeks and chin.

Sammy was pretty much the child of everyone in the pack. Clary only had a few friends who had children, and Jocelyn had friends who had babies that she used to see when she was younger, and even though the mothers and fathers always had support systems, it was nothing like the one that Sammy, Maia and Jordan had. Sammy was pretty much the most important person in the entire room, she even turned the big, bag Alpha to goo when she blinked her big, brown eyes up at him, curling her fingers into claws. It was another one of the reasons why Clary was glad that she had been brought into this world, into this pack.

As if knowing what she was thinking, Jace hand on her shoulder tightened and then shifted. He slid it underneath her long hair, carefully extracting it from Sammy's sleepy grip, and then cupping her neck. Clary let him, leaning into his touch. An Alpha's hand around the back of one of his werewolves neck was a move that was meant to be grounding, comforting. Clary wasn't a werewolf, but that touch had become invaluable to her, even if it didn't affect her quite in the same way. His fingers traced up and down the side neck, lightly playing with her hair, and Clary let out a slight hum of contentment as she leaned against the side of his arm chair, her grip around Sammy tightening to make sure the girl was safe and secure against her body.

After the movie, Maia took Sammy down to the other end of the house and tucked her into her cot. Usually on pack nights they would all sleep together, but given it was a full moon tomorrow, and they would all be puppy piling in a mess after they finished their run in the woods, so they would be going back to their own rooms tonight.

There was another argument over the next movie, but Clary wasn't paying too much attention again, but this time it was because she was almost asleep. Jace's fingers were massaging her scalp, and halfway through the movie, Jem had shifted over to lay his head on her lap and Max had rolled over so that he could lean against her legs. She was warm, surrounded by the people she loved, and so when a fight broke out over whether they were going to be putting _Fight Club_ or _Titanic_ on, she didn't have any input.

"Clary," Max was whispering and shaking her arm slightly. "Clary!" She blinked and opened her arms, seeing that the TV screen was now dark, and people were moving around her in the dark, light only coming from the stars and moon through the windows.

"I'm awake," she mumbled out and she saw a flash of teeth as he smiled at her.

"You're getting old," Max teased her. Clary narrowed her eyes at him and lazily pulled the fingers. Simon and Max both laughed, and Simon reached out a hand, helping her to her feet.

"C'mon, girl," Jace murmured, putting one hand underneath her elbow and steadying her on her feet.

"I can walk," Clary protested tiredly as she tugged her arm away. Isabelle and Simon were heading upstairs to their bedroom on the third floor, Jem and Max were doing the same thing, their rooms on the second floor, and Maia and Jordan were walking toward the back of the house. Originally their bedroom had been on the second floor, but after having Sammy, they relocated to one of the spare bedrooms downstairs, not wanting to trek up and down the stairs in the middle of the night when Sammy woke up. Alec and Magnus were up on the third floor as well, down the opposite end from Isabelle and Simon.

Apparently the Herondale home used to be a whole lot larger than this, when Jace's parents were alive, before the house had been burnt practically to the ground. Jace and his pack had rebuilt the home from the ground up, using as much of the original structure as possible. All of this was before Clary and Simon had come along. Clary remembers driving past the house when her and Simon were exploring the township and wondering just how many people lived in the house. The house was built big and spacious to make room for pack and their families, and also for visiting packs when they stayed.

Jace had literally built a home for his pack, somewhere for them to be safe and loved, and Clary couldn't stop the stupid smile on her face everytime she thought of that.

"You're tired," Jace stated, his voice low as he walked after Clary. The spare room that she stayed in was on the second floor, opposite Jace's room. "Are you sleeping okay?"

"I'm fine," Clary answered, rubbing her eyes. "It's just been a long week, you know?" She sighed as she walked down toward the end of the hall. She hoped that downstairs where Maia and Jordan's was, the door would be shut. As much as she loved Sammy, she just wanted to sleep through the night, without any interruptions from crying babies. Another plus side to Jace rebuilding the house was he made sure each of the bedrooms were sound proof. Clary remembered living in the tiny apartment with Simon, and even with their human hearing at the time, they could hear one another through the wall. Clary could only imagine just how awkward things could get between the were's if they heard one another at night.

"Was it Helen who fixed your shoulder?" Jace asked as they stopped by the door for the spare room, which should really just be called Clary's room. She had spare clothes in there, a couple of photographs and books, and other things that had just slowly migrated from her home.

"Yeah," Clary admitted as she leaned against the door frame and looked up at Jace.

"Well, at least you let someone help you," Jace muttered and Clary rolled her eyes up at him, looking up at the Alpha through her eyelashes.

"I don't need to rely on you anymore than I already do," she mumbled. Jace frowned, she could see his expression even in the dark hallway. Jace's eyes glowed slightly, just a faint crimson colour, and he reached out to rest his hand on her hip.

"You don't rely on me _enough_ ," he murmured, his voice quiet. "And even if you did, that's what I'm here for. I'm here to look after you." Clary's heart started beating a little faster at that, and Jace's fingers tightened at her hip, obviously able to hear the increase in her heart rate. His face was only a couple of inches away from her own, and she could see his eyes burning a little brighter. "You're more breakable than the rest of us, and I need to make sure you're always okay." Clary couldn't stop herself from letting out a shaky breath at the intensity of his words, and the way that he was staring at her, and she looked down.

The exhale seemed to break the moment, and Jace dropped his hand from her hip, leaning forward to press a soft kiss against her forehead.

"Get some sleep," he whispered. "I'll see you tomorrow."


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter !  
> Hope you guys enjoy it :)

Clary would have slept in the next morning, except Isabelle and Jem jumped on her bed in the morning, bouncing up and down and shaking her awake, and were soon joined by Max. Jace stopped by, looking through the doorway at the four of them in the bed, Max pulling at his sisters hair and Jem trying to get under the covers with Clary, demanding that she be 'big spoon'. They were like a bunch of kids, Clary rolling her eyes and letting them under duvet even though it meant she was squished in the middle.

Simon came to the second storey, wearing a pair of sweatpants and rubbing his eyes, grinning at the group of people through the bed past Jace before continuing down the hall. Jace felt his heart swelling in his chest, and then quickly controlled his emotions as Isabelle's head jerked in his direction, obviously picking up on her Alpha's feelings. He dragged his fingers through his hair and followed after Simon, his the wooden floors cool under his bare feet.

"You guys are fat and annoying," Clary grumbled under her breath as she tried to get back into the same comfortable position that she had been in before.

"No, we're not," Isabelle sung out as she slung a leg around Clary's waist and buried her face in Clary's neck. "We're in peak physical condition." Clary rolled her eyes at the comment, smothering her smile in the pillow.

"And you fucking love us," Max added.

"Why are you guys even bothering me? Isn't Jace making breakfast by now?" Clary asked with a raise of her eyebrows. Jem lifted his head, sniffing the air and scrunching up his nose.

"He's only just started," Jem reported. "Which means if we go down now, we'll get roped into helping him cook."

"Lazy bastards," Clary mumbled fondly. Max tickled her side under the blankets and she lashed out a foot in his direction before letting out a sigh of resignation, knowing that she wasn't going to be able to get back sleep.

It was a sunny day, which meant most of it spent outside. The werewolves had more energy than usual when it was coming up to a full moon, even little Sammy feeling the pull of her inner wolf. She was running around the back yard on her chubby, slightly unsteady legs, giggling as she chased after the older ones in her pack. Clary joined in, letting Sammy catch her and rolling over onto her stomach, tossing the little girl into the air. Sometimes during the full moon, Wills pack would join them or Julian Blackthorns, but it was going to be just them this time around.

Simon and Alec were wrestling, and getting pretty aggressive about it as well, but Clary had learnt a long time ago that even if they fought bloody, they healed almost instantly. It didn't mean she liked to watch them fight, but there was definitely something attractive about watching hot, shirtless men tangle together against a backdrop of leafy forest. When Jace joined in with the rest of his pack, Clary had to fan herself, feeling her cheeks heating up.

"Oh, _God,_ yes," Magnus hummed out from his spot next to Clary, and the girl giggled. Every now and then, Magnus would wiggle his fingers and shoot out a couple of sparks in the were's directions, not enough to hurt them, but enough to make them jump and glare playfully in his direction.

"I am most definitely not into men, yet that is one hell of a view," came a voice from behind Clary, and she turned around to see Aline Blackthorn-Penhallow standing there, grinning widely, her wife beside her.

"Hey!" Clary smiled up at them, pointing over to a couple of deck chairs next to her. "Sit down, enjoy the view." Aline waited for Helen to sit down before taking a seat on the other side, Magnus shuffling over to give the two woman some space.

"Oh, I most definitely will," Helen cooed as she slid her sunglasses over her eyes and rested her head backwards against the headrest.

"Pregnancy hormones," Aline noted with a snort. "She seems to completely have forgotten her sexuality is meant to be Aline-centric these days. It's just sex, sex, sex."

"That's bullshit," Helen laughed as she reached over to tousle Aline's hair. "You know you're the only one I'm interested in." Clary smiled at the pair of them, the love between them practically pulsating in the air. The werewolves had said it a hundred times, that the air always smelt sugary and sweet, like complete love and devotion when the pair of them were together, and Clary could completely understand that. Helen was fae, however she had been brought up with werewolves. Her half brother, Julian, was a werewolf and when she moved into this township to be with Aline, she had been drawn to Jace's pack.

Aline, on the other hand, had been brought up a Hunter, by a family who hunted down supernatural creatures. Hunters used to be a whole lot more sadistic, going after any supernatural being and killing them. They lived by more of a code these days, only going after ones who hurt or hunted humans, and Aline's families were one of those Hunters, respected by others in the community. However, it was still unusual for a Hunter to end up with a fae, marrying into a family with werewolves. That was the reason that they had ended up moving away from both families, to get some space for themselves.

They were one of the most beautiful couples Clary had ever known.

"Afternoon, Helen, Aline," Jordan greeted the two woman as he came up the steps and kissed both woman on the cheek. "You ladies staying for the full moon?"

"Ooh, I don't have the energy that," Helen shook her head, breathing in deeply as she rested her hand on her rounded stomach, her fingers massaging it. "I just wanted to come out for a few hours." Jordan nodded and smiled, and a couple of the were's came over, Sammy bouncing around on Jace's shoulders, her arms wrapped around his neck like a little monkey. When she saw Helen, her eyes lit up, and she made grabby hands for the woman. Maia and Jordan had attempted to explain to her that it was a baby in Helen's stomach a few weeks ago, and Sammy was fascinated.

Maia and Isabelle were now fighting, moving at speeds that were to fast for Clary to properly follow. They were wearing tiny cut off shorts and sports bras and both of them were sweating heavily, blood streaking their skin. Every now and then there were awful sounding cracks and shouts from one of them, but Clary was used to it by this point.

Jace dropped to the deck beside Clary, shirtless and sweating, only wearing a pair of shorts, and she bit her lip to stop herself from reaching out and touching his hair or trailing her fingers down his spine. He seemed to sense her hesitation, because he glanced over his shoulder at her, giving her a small, knowing smile, before looking back out over the backyard, watching his beta's tussle.

Helen and Aline left a few hours later, and the were's all started making dinner. It was a barbeque outside, all of the werewolves in states of undress as they ate. Max and Simon, the youngest ones in the pack other than Sammy, were practically vibrating out of their skin as night fell and the moon starting rising. Clary smiled from where she was sitting on the decking of the balcony and looked over at Sammy, who was running around the balcony on her pudgy legs, claws extending from her fingers and toes, her tiny fangs dropped from her jaw and her eyes glowing gold.

"Everyone ready?" Jace grunted as he glanced around his pack. Clary tucked her hands into her pockets as she watched the werewolves shift. Their eyes all glowed, their fangs dropped, and claws protruded from their fingers and toes. People who weren't used to their shifted faces would be scared, and Clary had to admit that the first few times that she had seen them, she had been frightened.

But now, it was a dangerous kind of beautiful.

Especially Jace.

Jace was the most dangerous, and the most beautiful, of them all.

The Alpha let out a howl and the werewolves took off so quickly there were whips of air that shot past Clary, Magnus and Jordan. Jordan let out a laugh, looking at Clary and Magnus one last time before he started running as well. Magnus grinned, reaching out a hand for Clary, and the two of them following after the pack.

They couldn't run as fast, and they definitely couldn't run for as long, but the three non-werewolves still participated in the moon run.

Somewhere along the way, Clary and Magnus let each others hands go, and Clary ran until it felt like her legs were going to give way underneath her. She caught a glimpse of Maia at one point, and a flash of red eyes that she knew to be Jace's, and Simon ran alongside her for a while, bumping his hip against hers and laughing playfully. Clary reached a creek that ran down the middle of the forest and she came to a stop, breathing heavily. She leaned down and dipped her hands into the icy water, splashing it onto her face.

She wasn't sure how long she had been running for, but her whole body was shaking and there was sweat dripping down her face. The werewolves would keep running until all hours of the night, probably into the morning, but it was time for her to turn around and make her way home.

"Done already?" Jace's voice was light and teasing, sounding so much more free than he usually did, speaking out from somewhere in the trees around her. "I might need to get some more training in." He always sounded different when he was running in a full moon, fully shifted, drawing on the power and the free flowing emotions of his pack. He sounded younger.

"Not all of us have superhuman powers!" Clary yelled out into the night, not sure where to direct her comment since all she was hearing was some rustling around her and a few 'whooshs' of air.

"No excuse!" Came the response and Clary snorted, shaking her head, getting ready to start jogging back in the direction of the house when there was the crack of branches to her left and then Jace came surging out of the woods and lunged at her. Clary let out a noise that was sort of a cross between a squeal and a giggle as Jace wrapped his arms around her and they were tumbling to the ground. Jace twisted his body so that he took the brunt of the fall, making sure that she was safe and landed on his chest, his arms looped around her torso.

"I heard you coming," Clary grinned down at him. "You're getting clumsy." His eyes were burning scarlet, his fangs were protruding, dropping from his gums, and there was more hair on his face than usual, coarser tufts. Clary smiled down at him, and from what she could tell, Jace was smiling back at her even though it was a little hard to tell. She shook her head, leaning down and nuzzling her nose against Jace's.

Almost impossibly, it seemed as though his eyes became a brighter red at the movement, and the werewolf reached upward, burying his neck in the curve of her neck and breathing in deeply. A shiver ran down her spine as she felt his claws curl gently against her back. She felt the brush of his fangs against her skin as he scented her, rubbing his arms up and down her back. They were still for a long few moments, before there was a loud whoop in front of them and Max came hurtling in their direction. Clary just had enough time to roll off Jace before Max leapt on his Alpha, the pair of them rolling around, snapping their jaws playfully at each other, and then disappearing off into the woods.

Clary lay on the ground a few minutes later, smiling after her boys before getting to her feet and jogging back home.


	8. Chapter 8

Clary blinked a couple of times as she slowly woke up, smushed between Jace and Isabelle. Both wolves were curled around her, Jace's face buried in her neck and Isabelle against her shoulder. She shifted carefully, knowing that her feet were likely pressed up against someone else, and when she lifted her head, she saw that Max had his head resting against her legs. She felt a little sticky, but there was a breeze coming from the open window to her right, and she let her eyes close again. She was only wearing a pair of plain underwear and a singlet, and the cool breeze felt good against her bare skin.

The were's around her were almost all fitted onto the two mattresses that were laid out on the lounge floor. Jace was the closest to the front door, as per usual, wearing just a pair of low slung sweatpants, then there was Clary, and Isabelle on her other side in similar clothing to Clary's, underwear and a tee-shirt. Max was sort of curled at the bottom of the mattress, his head wedged against Clary's legs and his arms splayed out toward his sister. Simon, Magnus, Alec and Jem were on the other mattress, while Maia and Jordan were on the couch which was alongside the mattresses and near the cot where Sammy was.

Sammy was making little snuffling noises in her cot, one side lowered so that she could still be exposed to the pack. With the way Maia was laying on the couch she was pressed up against the side of the cot, and Alec had one of his hands resting against Sammy's feet. As soon the little girl woke up, Maia would be wide awake, but even Sammy tended to sleep in the morning after a full moon, her little body tired.

Isabelle turned over, making Simon mumble in annoyance on her other side, and the whole puppy pile shifted a little as her movement was a catalyst for everyone else. For a moment, Clary thought that someone else was going to wake up. But then Isabelle and Simon settled down, and Magnus, who was stretched out at the end of the mattress with his head resting on Alec's lap, made himself comfortable once more on the other side of Simon and there seemed to be a sigh of contentment. Clary wiggled around slightly, trying to make herself comfortable with the change of position, and then she heard a grumble from Jace behind her, and it made her body jerk in response.

"Go back to sleep," Jace's voice was barely louder than a rasp, and she shivered as she felt his breath against the back of her neck, his lips moving against her skin. He tightened his arms around her waist, and Clary dropped her head back to the pillow, Isabelle making a pleased noise as she cuddled back up to her side. Jace's hand skimmed over her hip, his fingers curling as he shifted his hand to rest over her stomach, his thumb brushing against her comfortingly. Clary was back to sleep in seconds.

* * *

"It's almost as though you don't have a home," Clary lifted her eyebrows to where Isabelle was lounging on her bed, flipping through a magazine. Magnus and Jem were sitting on the floor, Magnus filing his nails while Jem was tapping away on his phone. She had finished work two hours ago, and had gone to the gym rather than coming straight home. She had worked out by herself for half an hour, and then had a rather brutal boxing lesson with one of the personal trainers. The werewolves, especially Jace, kept her fighting up to bar and made sure that she was in the best possible shape to defend herself from the supernatural, but Clary felt as though she could never be prepared enough. Hence the boxing lessons with the occasional afternoon out at the gun range.

"There's crazy tension back at our place," Isabelle replied idly.

"Is that whatever is going on between Jace and Alec?" Clary questioned. Magnus nodded his head while Isabelle and Jem exchanged a look. "Max mentioned that the other week."

"They're arguing about Will and the omega," Isabelle stated.

"Still?" Clary frowned.

"Alec thinks that Will was too lax in just making sure the omega was at the edge of their territory," Jem said as he put his phone on the ground and leaned his head back against the edge of the mattress. "And Jace doesn't want to talk about it, says that we shouldn't be getting too involved in another pack's business." Clary's eyebrows lifted in surprise at Jace's opinion on the matter. "But the thing is, Jace has been going out twice a day to patrol our boundaries."

"That sounds like he's worried about something," Clary mused.

"And he made me check all my wards," Magnus added with a sniff. "As if I've ever let you all down with my magic."

"So Alec's pissed because he knows that Jace is keeping something from us, and specifically from _him_ , and it's making it awkward as shit to be around them," Isabelle concluded. "Which is why we're here."

"This is why you need your own homes," Clary grumbled under her breath as she shoved Isabelle's feet out of the way so that she could sit down on her bed, but they knew that there was no real bite to her words. There was no way Jace's pack was ever going to move out of the big home that he had built for them, surrounded by the warmth and scents of love of their pack. They tried on a regular basis to try and have Clary move in, even though she stayed there several nights a week and came out almost everyday, her scent entertwined with theirs already.

"I better head off," Magnus sighed as he got off the ground, swiping his hands over his slacks and looking at himself in the floor length mirror that hung behind Clary's wardrobe door. "I've got a house showing across town in about half an hour."

"Here ya go," Clary murmured as she picked up Magnus suit jacket where he had laid it across the bottom of her bed to stop it from crinkling, holding it out to him. "A bit late for a house showing isn't it?"

"They sound like a workaholic couple," Magnus made a face as he took the jacket from Clary and slipped it on, doing up two of the buttons. "They both work long hours, and they viewed getting off at this time as getting off early. But hey—that's fine by me. They're looking at buying one of those new, stupidly over priced condos on the other side of town, and if they view it as such a hassle to get time off work, maybe they'll just throw in an offer to get it out of the way. Bigger bonus for me!"

"We'll see you tonight," Jem said, still absorbed in his phone, and Magnus shot them all a feline-like grin, wiggling his fingers at the group, his eyes glowing a faint gold before he was heading out the door.

"Can you talk to Jace?" Isabelle asked abruptly, rolling over on the bed so that she was facing Clary. The red head lifted her eyebrows at the werewolf, who was giving her hopeful look. "He listens to you."

"He listens to you as well," Clary reasoned. "He's your Alpha, it's kind of built into his DNA to listen to you."

"Yeah, but you know he listens more to you," Jem piped up from where he was. "It's different with you because he lo—" there was a sub-vocal growl from Isabelle that made the younger werewolf cut off and change direction with his argument. "It'll sound better coming from you, and he won't just walk off in the middle of the conversation and ignore you if he doesn't want to answer your questions."

"You sure about that?" Clary raised an eyebrow.

"Come on," Isabelle rolled her eyes. "Most of the time he communicates with a bunch of grunts and growls, but he talks to you." Clary sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. "Come _on_ ," Isabelle was pouting now, nudging Clary in the side with her elbow. "You're our pack mummy, you have to look after us. That means looking after our mental well-being as well, and watching our Alpha and his second-in-command argue all the time is doing all sorts of bad things to our heads," she was now batting her eyelashes up at Clary and Jem had abandoned his phone to turn around and give Clary a hopeful look.

"You're pathetic—you both are," Clary grunted and Isabelle punched her fist in the air, taking that as a victory. "And I'm telling Jace that you're scared of him."

"We're not scared!" Jem protested.

"I'm not even a werewolf and I can tell that you're lying," Clary retorted as she got off her bed.

"Yeah, well..." Jem didn't have a response for that, so he crossed his arms over his chest. Clary pulled her shirt over her head and kicked off her leggings, putting the clothes in the washing basket in the corner of the room. She had had a quick shower after she had finished at the gym, and hadn't washed her hair and it was still damp and sweaty from her work out. It had taken her a while to adapt to how open the werewolves were with their bodies, stripping down to their underwear and walking around shirtless on a regular basis, but after a few months she had adapted. She had felt even more confident around them after Jace and the other were's had pushed her to start training with them, and her soft boy became a little harder with toned muscle.

"I'm gonna have a shower. If you two are staying for dinner, then start on it. Pork mince and vegetables are in the fridge, and pasta is in the cupboard," Clary stated. "Dinner was going to be stir fry." She really didn't need to phrase it as though they weren't going to stay, because she knew that they would. As soon as she walked out of her bedroom and toward her bathroom, she heard them moving around, walking to the kitchen. She smiled as she turned on the shower, listening to the pair of them squabble like little kids about who was going to cut up the vegetables.


	9. Chapter 9

Clary frowned as she jogged toward her house, noting the motorbike that was parked in her driveway. She looked down at the watch on her wrist and winced as she realized that she had been gone for longer than she had planned. On the plus side though, she had never had such good stamina in her life. Clearly, training with werewolves who reminded her every so often that one day she could be running for her life did wonders for her exercise regime. Jace had a strict training program for all of them, making them practice with each other a couple times a week, and while Clary didn't fight with them often, Jace and Magnus still always made her run through the motions.

She reached her front door and wasn't at all surprised to see that it was open. She kicked off her shoes and couldn't help but glance at the mirror hanging near the entrance way, glad that she had slowed down about ten minutes ago as a cool down. Her face was red and her freckles were standing out a little, but at least she wasn't sweating like a pig.

"I made you a smoothie," Jace told her as she came into the kitchen, where he was leaning forward with his elbows against the bench, flipping through a magazine, looking as though he belonged there.

"Thanks," Clary flashed him a smile as she pulled her earplugs out of her ears, turning off the music on her phone and putting it down on the kitchen bench. Jace reached over and pulled over the tall glass that he had poured the smoothie into and handed it to Clary. She picked up the glass and sipped it, feeling her stomach clench at how he had made it just the way she liked it.

Just another perfect thing about him.

Jace sent her a sideways look through a few strands of hair that had fallen in front of his face, and she guessed that her heart had probably sped up at the thought that had run through her head. Clary pretended not to see the look and kept on drinking the smoothie until half of it was gone. She put the glass down and wiped her hand across her mouth, tugging the hair tie out of her hair and shaking it out of the tight ponytail it had been in.

"Everything okay?" Jace's voice sounded rough as he turned around and looked at her, his eyes flickering down to the tiny pair of bike shorts that she was wearing before meeting her eyes again.

"Uh, yeah," Clary nodded, running her fingers through her hair. "Yeah, we're good." She saw his hand twitch at his side as she walked past him, toward the lounge, and he did that thing with his nose where he shifted his face to follow her, breathing in subtly. It wasn't something that she had noticed very much when she was first surrounded by werewolves, but by this point, she knew that it meant they were inhaling her scent. It happened a lot, especially with Jace and Simon. Not for the first time she wondered what she smelt like to them, and if she smelt different to Jace compared to the other werewolves.

"You okay?" Jace grunted as he followed after her and sat down on the coffee table itself, opposite the couch where she had sat down, their knees pressed together.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Clary had another sip of her smoothie before leaning forward and giving him a serious look. "I asked you to come over because there's something we need to talk about." Jace raised an eyebrow at her, and he tried to keep his expression blank, but she saw the nervousness spark in his eyes. She had learnt how to pick up on the smallest changes in facial expressions since being surrounded with were's, especially since they naturally had the upper hand of being able to scent the change in mood and hear the quicken of a heart beat. "You're hiding something," she stated, knowing that the blunt approach was the best way when it came to Jace. Jace didn't say anything but his frown deepened. "There's something going on with you and Alec and it's affecting the rest of the pack."

"Did they ask you to say something?" Jace's narrow eyes fixed on her. Clary pursed her lips and shrugged one of her shoulders. He looked annoyed and let out a frustrated huff as he stood up from the coffee table.

"Jace..." Clary murmured as she got up as well, putting down her glass and stepping after him. He was standing in front of the windows that looked out over her back yard, and she reached out and put her hand on his shoulder, feeling the warm, rippling muscle underneath the jacket he was wearing. "What's going on?"

"It's nothing I want to talk about," Jace responded.

"That's not going to work with me, Jace," Clary said, her voice firm. She felt him stiffen under her touch at her disagreement. It wasn't that he wasn't used to his pack having a difference of opinion, that's what happened when you had a pack of strong opinionated people. But Clary knew that it was more to do with her being the one to disagree with him that was putting him on edge. "Jace, you might be able to tell the rest of your pack to fuck off and leave you alone, but you can't do that with me, you know that."

"I need you to keep it quiet," he began as he drew in a deep breath, shifting to turn around and face her. He leaned backwards against the window, bracing his hands on the window sill as he looked at Clary, his golden eyes intense. "Alec's not happy..."

"You can trust me, Jace, you know that," Clary murmured quietly, the hand that had been on his shoulder sliding around to rest on his chest, resting over his heart, which was beating steadily. She saw Jace swallow hard, and he moved his hand to lay over hers, linking their fingers together before continuing.

"There was a scent that Alec picked up on when he and Max were following after the hunters the other week," Jace said, his fingers tightening around hers. "And we've smelt it a couple of times before, so he told me about it when we got back to the hotel room, and the next morning we went back out there."

"What was it? The scent?" Clary frowned.

"We've smelt it twice before," Jace ran his tongue along his upper lip and Clary followed the movement with her glittering eyes before lifting her eyes back to his. "Once when Jem was changed, the smell was all over him for weeks after he was turned by the rogue Alpha. And once," he shifted the hand that wasn't holding hers, resting it on the curve of her hip and squeezing lightly. "And once when you and Simon were attacked." Clary's eyes widened and it was a natural response to try and tug her hand away to step back, but Jace didn't let her.

"It's the same rogue were?" Clary asked with widened eyes.

"It's the same one," Jace confirmed with a short nod.

"Why didn't Jem or Simon recognize the scent?" She asked, feeling a little sick at the idea of the rogue Alpha who attacked her and Simon and who forcibly turned Jem being so close to their home again, even though Will's territory was still several hours away. Given the rogue had already come back twice, once with Simon and once with Jem, there was always the chance that he would come back, but it had been a long time since she had thought about him. Along with the sick feeling in her stomach was a flash of anger, that this rogue was potentially threatening her family—her pack.

"Simon wasn't turned when the rogue attacked your car, you know that," Jace murmured. "I didn't turn him until we pulled him out of the car, and he wouldn't have remembered any scents or sounds while it was happening. And with Jem, he couldn't focus when he was first turned, you remember what he was like, couldn't keep his head on straight with the way everything was amplified for him." Clary remembered back over a year and a half ago when Jem first became part of their pack. The poor kid was lost and confused, was finding it hell to get through school each day with the assault on his senses.

"Isabelle said you smelt like the morgue," Clary prompted, her breath tight in her throat.

"First, Alec and I went back to where Alec had picked up on the scent the night before. And then we went to the morgue. The body had already been taken, but we had a look at the reports. They were all standard ones when it comes to humans trying to cover up a werewolf attack, nothing different, pointing toward who it might be," Jace sighed. "I called Will and told him to tell us if they smell the rogue again."

"Do you have any idea of who it might be? I mean...If the rogue keeps coming back in this area, maybe it's one of the were's who were here before?" Clary suggested, although she knew that Jace and Alec had undoubtedly thought of that already. Jace was already shaking his head.

"Apart from Maia, there were three other werewolves in the area. There was Gabriel, Theo and Leila," Jace responded. "Theo and Leila were together, and they liked not having an Alpha. Which was completely fine, that's their own business if they don't want to be affiliated with a pack, but it meant that they needed to leave, because this is Herondale territory. Gabriel stayed around for a bit, but his girlfriend, Véronique, was killed in a convenience store robbery in a few towns over." Clary winced in sympathy. "He didn't stay around for much longer than that, everything around here reminded her of him."

"Understandable," Clary mumbled.

"Besides, I know all of their scents, so does Alec, and it wasn't them," Jace told her. Clary nodded a couple of times, processing everything that he had told her.

"So why is there tension between you and Alec?" She pressed.

"Alec wants to tell the rest of the pack," Jace muttered. "I don't."

"What?" Clary arched an eyebrow.

"It's going to make some of them upset—especially Simon and Jem. Simon can deal with it, I don't doubt that, although Isabelle will probably get worked up. But Jem shouldn't have to worry about it. I wanted to find out more before I said anything," Jace looked pained at the idea of causing any unrest in his pack. "I didn't mean for the pack to get caught up in between me and Alec, that's not what I wanted." Clary nodded again and took a step back from him, tugging her hands free and walking back to the couch. "You alright?" Jace's words were clipped but she knew he was watching her carefully.

"I'm fine," Clary licked her lips and rubbed them together as she thought, before crossing her arms over her chest an turning back to him. "You need to tell them—the rest of the pack."

"No," Jace said abruptly.

"Yes," Clary argued back. "You and Alec fighting isn't making anyone in the house happy, and that's not good. Max is feeling torn between his brother and his Alpha, the rest of your pack doesn't like it when you and your second in command are at odds." Jace sighed and looked away from her, but Clary kept her eyes on him levelly.

"You need to get it out there in the open. I know that you're trying to protect them, but this isn't the right way. They trust you— _we love you_ ," Clary assured him and Jace looked back at her, head tipped forward slightly toward her. "You just need to be honest with them. They'll follow your lead, you just need to let them in, and show that you trust them as much as they trust you." Jace stared down at her for a long time, and Clary felt her breath catching in her throat at the flecks of red that were shining in his usually flawless gold eyes.

"Okay," Jace jerked his head in a nod. "Okay," he repeated, stepping toward her to rest his hand on the side of her neck. He leaned in, and her eyes automatically fluttered closed as his lips touched the corner of her mouth, mainly on her cheek, but the softness of his mouth ever so slightly against hers. "Thank you," he told her earnestly as he pulled back. Clary's heart was beating wildly in her chest, and she didn't doubt for a second that he could hear it, but he didn't say anything. He gave her a small, almost unnoticeable smile, before walking toward the door. A couple of seconds later, she heard the engine of his motorbike roar to life as he left her drive way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you guys enjoyed the update :)


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love this story - hope you guys are enjoying it !

The tension in the room was palpable and Clary pursed her lips as she looked around the room. Simon's lips were parted and Isabelle's eyebrows were pulled together, her eyes narrowed and flashing as Jace explained everything he had told Clary two nights ago. Alec had looked surprised when Jace had begun speaking once all the pack had finished dinner and gathered in the lounge, ready to put on a movie. Clary was sitting beside Jem on the couch, and the younger boy was chewing down on his bottom lip as Jace finished speaking. She reached out and put her arm around Jem's shoulders, tugging him in close to her side. Jem folded into her hug, resting his head on her shoulder even though he was so much taller than him.

"You should have told us when all this shit first started happening," Maia spoke up, her voice quiet but even. There was a hum of agreement from a couple of the were's in the room, but there wasn't any blatant anger on their faces. Some looked hurt and confused, but they weren't angry at Jace, because they knew that their Alpha was just looking out for what was best for them, even if it was a little misguided.

"I'm sorry," Jace's voice was earnest, and Clary knew that the werewolves would be listening to to the steady heartbeat, hearing his honesty.

"Have you picked up on the scent anywhere around here?" Simon asked, his hands clenched together in front of him as he looked over at Jace.

"No," Jace shook his head. "And we've been going out and checking the perimeters regularly."

"And that's why you asked me a couple of times to check the wards," Magnus murmured, getting a nod from Alec. Magnus shot his boyfriend a dirty look, and Clary was guessing that Jace was going to be let off easier than Alec when it came to Magnus. Jem was still resting against Clary's side, and she rubbed her hand up and down his bare arm, tilting her head to the side, letting him easily breathe in her scent as comfort. Max and Jem were the youngest at sixteen and seventeen respectively, and the rest of the pack felt even more protective toward them than usual. There was something about Clary being human that drew two to her, which was why Jem looked as though he was practically clinging to her.

"We trust you with your lives," Isabelle's voice was soft as she stood up and walked over to where Jace was standing, putting her hand down on his elbow. She kept her eyes lowered as a sign of respect, and Clary followed Jace's eyes as he blinked in relief and lifted one hand to touch the side of her neck. Isabelle took that as a sign that she was okay to meet his eyes, because she jutted her chin forward and looked up. "But you need to be more straight forward with us. Because we're _pack_. That's closer than blood and family." Jace nodded and Isabelle looked over her shoulder to where the rest of the pack was sitting, her eyes flickering over the group before resting on her boyfriend for a moment. Then she left the lounge, heading toward the steps up to her and Simon's room. The room fell back into silence, and Alec raised his eyebrow over at Clary, giving her another look, and she ignored him pointedly, looking over to where Simon was sitting, hands still clasped in front of him.

"I'm gonna go for a run," Jem said abruptly, pulling away from Clary and reaching down to kiss her on her temple.

"Jem—" Maia began, getting up from her seat.

"I'll be back later," Jem was already running out the door, his jacket tossed over his shoulder an onto the ground. Jace licked his lips, his fingers twitching. It looked as though he wanted to say something, maybe shout after Jem, but he stayed in his seat, his nostrils flaring as he breathed out heavily. Maia sighed and looked down at Jordan, who was sitting quietly on the corner of the couch, his lips pursed together. There was some tension in the room between the rest of the pack that was there, and even Sammy was looking around with a confused expression on her little face.

"We might head upstairs," Jordan spoke up, and Maia nodded, eyes moving over to Jace, who gave an ever so slight nod of his head.

"I can look after Sammy for a bit," Clary hoped the smile she gave them was a bit more relaxed that the situation felt, wanting to smooth everything over. It wasn't as though Jace had put any of them in danger, but there were barely ever secrets in a pack, and given this affected both Simon and Jem, Clary could understand that they felt upset he hadn't wanted to tell them what he and Alec had found out. They were a close knit pack, trusting each other and living together as though they had known each other all their lives instead of some one them just a couple of years, and they weren't used to keeping things from one another.

"Thanks, babe," Maia gave her a smile and then she and Jordan left the room. Sammy watched them go, her eyes wide, but then she just started chewing on the teething ring in one of her hand, using her human teeth.

"I'm going to go up and check on Izzy," Simon said quietly as he got off the couch. Clary watched him carefully, and he looked like he was going to head straight past Jace, but he paused, and put his hand on Jace's arm. "I understand why you did it," his voice was low, and Clary only heard the words because she was sitting close by. "Thanks for telling us." Then he was leaving the room as well, so only Jace, Clary, Magnus, Alec and Sammy were left.

"I'm going to go find Jem," Jace finally spoke, and got up from his arm chair. He paused, looking down at Clary, and she reached out her hand toward him. He took it, squeezing her fingers tightly and looking like he wanted to give her a hug, but decided against it and took off out the front door, heading in the same direction that Jem had gone, into the woods that surrounded the house. Sammy's rosebud lips parted as she watched her Alpha go, tilting her head to the side so that her few, dark coloured curls flopped to the side. Even as a baby, she still recognized Jace as her Alpha, something that both confused and amazed Clary.

"You talked him into this," Alec stated, raising an eyebrow over at Clary. "He wasn't going to say anything, he was fucking stubborn as shit about it. But he went to your place last night, and you convinced him to tell the rest of the pack." She gave him a level look before getting off the couch and walking over to Sammy.

"Have you had a bath, darling?" She cooed, and Sammy gave her a gummy smile. Alec opened his mouth but Magnus shot a look over at him, and Alec sighed, his expression almost grumpy as he looked out the window instead. Clary ignored the pair as she picked Sammy up and rested her on her hip, the little girls eyes flaring gold with happiness for a moment as she weaved one fist into Clary's long, red hair. As she walked out of the room, Alec spoke again, his tone gravelly,

"You're good for him." Clary hoped that the red flush on her cheeks didn't appear until she was out of the room. Sammy definitely noticed the change in Clary's heartbeat, because she gave her a curious look before looking back down at her teething ring.

* * *

It was dark outside by the time Jace got back to the house, Jem jogging at his side. Both boys had dirt and drying blood on their arms and Jem had it on his legs. The cuts that had come from trees and twigs snagging on their limbs had long healed, and Jem looked tired from running for so long. Jace could have gone for longer, but it wasn't about him getting a good work out tonight, it was just about keeping the young were in his pack company. Jem wasn't angry, he had just been confused, and like all the other were's in the pack, everything just made so much more sense when he was in his wolf form.

"You alright?" Jace grunted as they reached the back porch of the house, the curtains and windows all shut now, but the back door still unlocked and the light on, waiting for them to get back.

"I'm fine," Jem nodded. The younger boy wasn't lying, Jace could hear his steady heart beat, but he was still picking up on his nervous chemosignals. He held the door open to let Jem in first, but he reached out for him before he could disappear into the house. Jem blinked back at him as Jace's hand shifted from where he was holding his shoulder, tightening his grip around the back of Jem's neck. Jem let out a breath, his body relaxing under his Alpha's touch, and the remaining tension in his body seemed to relax.

"You come and see me if you need to talk," Jace told him earnestly. "Me or one of the others, if you want to talk." Jem gave Jace a small smile, this time seeming more sincere, and Jace let his hand rest there on the back of Jem's neck for a few moments later, his comforting, Alpha scent rubbing off on Jem's skin before letting him go. They started walking toward the stairs, and Jem paused once they got to the top, sniffing the air before shooting Jace a grin.

"Clary's still here," he smirked, his eyes twinkling knowingly. Jace just shot him a narrow eyed look before shoving past him, heading toward his room.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter!

Instead of going to his own bedroom, Jace gently pushed open the door for the spare room where Clary stayed. While he had been hoping that she would stay the night—just like he always hoped that she would stay, since she refused to move into the house despite the fact that the whole pack tried to convince her—he hadn't been sure if she actually would. He heard a second heart beat coming from her room, and he picked up on Sammy's scent before the door had even opened properly. Clary had gotten good at sensing things like people watching her or entering the room, even if they were moving close to silent, one of the things that you pick up on when you're surrounded with supernatural beings on a daily basis. But she hadn't seemed to realize that Jace was watching her, his whole face soft as he looked at Clary cradling Sammy in her arms, the tiny werewolf fast asleep and clutching onto Clary's hair with one hand. Jace could sense that Clary was tired, but there was no resentment for the child in her arms, only absolute, pure love.

And that made Jace's heart beat so fast in his chest that he didn't doubt for one second any of the werewolves in the house would be able to hear if they weren't all in their sound proof rooms with their doors shut.

Clary was...Clary was one of a kind.

She was beautiful, and intelligent, and kind, and selfless and one of the most incredible beings that Jace had ever encountered.

She was loyal and a survivor, adapting to things that so many people would catch a glimpse of and then run in the opposite direction. He knew that sometimes she considered herself weak, and that she still felt bad about leaving to go to University, but Jace had always known that she would come back to the township, and he had been selfishly happy about that, even though he knew that she deserved a life away from all this craziness.

Right from when he had first laid eyes on her, he had felt a pull to the redhead. Isabelle was head over heels for Simon, and the kid had been smart enough to know that there was something going on with her, Jace and Alec, although he had absolutely no idea what it was. Jace could sense the confusion and curiousness on the younger man whenever he was around, but even though Isabelle had been rapidly falling in love with him, she had known better than to ask Jace if she could reveal their secret. Jace had kept his distance from them, just like he did with most people who weren't pack, but then the night of the accident had happened.

They had been tracking the scent of the rogue Alpha when they had heard a roar and then a horrible clanking of twisting metal. That was the first time he had ever seen Clary, bleeding and trapped in the passenger side of the car, looking terrified and hurt, but watching her best friend intently, her worry only for him.

Isabelle had begged him to save Simon, and Jace knew that he had to—for his pack, but also for the red haired girl, who was fading in and out of consciousness. Alec had ripped her from the car and had brought her around to the side of the road where Simon was stretched out in Isabelle's arms. She kept mumbling Simon's name, trying to lift her arm to reach him, and the determination in the girls face paired with the way Isabelle was crying and asking for him to save Simon, to change him, had been enough for Jace to open his mouth and turn his first human to a werewolf.

Afterwards, he had a couple of idle thoughts about how he had thought his first turning would go. His father had always told him that it would feel completely different from anything else, it was almost like a spiritual experience. But it wasn't something that you were just supposed to do as a spur of the moment decision unless the situation completely demanded it. This definitely was one of those life or death situations, but it had all been over with so quickly, it took a little while for it to sink in that it had actually happened. Sure, he was an Alpha, and Isabelle, Alec and Maia were all technically his beta's, but he hadn't turned them, which gave him a different sort of tie toward Simon.

Once he had processed what he had done, his thoughts had moved to Clary, who was sleeping on the couch in their lounge. Alec had suggested taking her to one of the bedrooms, but Isabelle had reminded them that unlike Simon, she had never been to their house before, and waking up on the second floor of a house that she had never been in would probably freak her out, especially after what she had just seen. Being in the lounge in an open space and being able to see outside and the front door would probably calm her down a bit.

Clary had been a little panicked when she had woken up—she had been alone when she woke up, but the werewolves all heard the change in her heart beat as she came back to consciousness and looked around. But she had recovered quickly, and then her complete focus had been all about Simon.

Magnus had been the one who explained things best to her, and she had snorted and been disbelieving at first, but then it had all sunk in.

Jace was pretty sure the part of her that he had been most surprised by—not all unpleasantly, although admittedly it did lead to some friction—was the way that Clary had no qualms about going toe to toe with him when she disagreed about something. It was only two weeks after Simon had been turned that he and Clary had their first argument, and the rest of the pack had no idea what to do, watching wide eyed as the petite human faced off against the Alpha werewolf fearlessly.

The love that she had for Simon had quickly extended to the rest of the pack, and Jace had watched the way that they all gravitated toward her. Jordan liked not being the only human in the pack, and Max liked having someone to talk to who wasn't his Alpha or his siblings, and Alec was strange in the way that he grudgingly accepted Clary, and he seemed to like her even more when she argued with Jace.

She was nothing like Camille Belcourt.

Just bringing that woman's name to his head made Jace feel dirty and used all over.

When he was younger, the Belcourt coven had been living in a neighboring town. There was a hesitant truce between them and the Herondale pack that had been lead by Stephen Herondale, Jace's father. Vampires and werewolves never got on particularly, distaste for each other ran in their veins and was built into their bones, but to keep the peace, the head of the coven and the Alpha of the pack had come to an agreement long ago. Sometimes it was shaky, and war was threatened, but most of the time they managed to exist without running into each other. When saying that they lived in neighboring towns, there were still several hours between their homes, and they made a point to stay out of each others way. But then one of the vampires had been killed, looking as though they had been completely shredded apart by fangs, and that was when things became even more strained.

A majority of the coven had wanted to break the truce, and blame the werewolves, and attack. But their elders had refused to let them do it, saying that they could not break the agreement without complete proof, because going up against just one pack, could bring on a whole lot more trouble from other packs. The Herondale pack had known that it wasn't a werewolf who attacked the vampire when Stephen had examined the body, and he had determined that it was a hellhound, but the vampires had claimed that he was just trying to cover for his pack.

When Jace was fifteen, he had met Camille completely by accident, or at least, that was what he had thought. She had been beautiful and more experienced and even though she had been a vampire, for some reason he had thought that she was different. She never seemed to give off any indication of finding the fact he was a werewolf a problem, although in hindsight, vampires were notoriously good at covering their feelings and chemosignals, given they had thousands and thousands of years to pick up tricks and practice. Jace had been young, and impressionable, and he had thought he loved her—that she loved him.

It turned out that the vampire who had been killed had been her little brother, and the only real family that she had left.

And in response to his murder and the Herondale pack being blamed, she had taken her revenge by worming her way into Jace's confidence, and attacking the pack when they were at their weakest, her and two other vampires who didn't believe in the truce.

They had killed everyone.

They had killed his parents, and the rest of the pack that he had grown up, who were his family. The three children—two of whom were human—that Jace had known since the minute they were born. His grandfather, and his aunts...They had killed everyone.

The only reason Jace had been spared was because he had been out of the town at the time, leaving last minute with Will to go and visit the Lightwoods in the city. It had been something they had just randomly decided, they hadn't even told the Lightwoods that they were coming. They had almost reached the Lightwoods when a sick feeling had overtaken Jace, and all of a sudden his blood was burning in his veins and then his eyes turned red, a bloody haze falling over his vision.

The Alpha spark had been passed onto him, which meant that Stephen had been killed.

It had taken a long time before he could look himself in the mirror again, and he still blamed himself for their deaths. It didn't matter what people said, he carried the guilt around, heavy on his shoulders. He was no longer the laughing, joking kid he had been before Camille and his pack had been wiped out, and it had taken him a long time to trust anyone new.

Clary was different.

"Jace?" He blinked, not realizing that he was still in the doorway, just staring at her. Clary's face was concerned, and her voice was low. "What's wrong?" Jace schooled his expression to a careful, blank one, but Clary just raised an eyebrow at him, and he knew that he wasn't fooling anyone. Clary shifted Sammy in her arms, and then silently lifted an arm toward Jace. He was taken aback by the blatant invitation, but he didn't hesitate to walk over to her. He was still had dirt and a couple of streaks of blood, but Clary didn't appear at all phased as he slipped between her duvet covers and pressed his body against Clary's. "Jem alright?" Clary asked softly, smoothly shifting the direction of conversation since she picked up he didn't want to talk about what was on his mind.

"He's fine," Jace murmured as he tugged on Clary's body. They shuffled around until they were lying down rather than in a seated position. Sammy made a little noise in the back of her throat and re-positioned herself. The wolf inside the toddler could sense that her Alpha was near, because she reached out a hand in a subconscious effort to get closer to him. Jace put an arm around Clary, letting it rest in the dip in her side and letting the toddler grip his finger. A calm settled over him, soothed by Clary and the toddler—by his pack.

It didn't take long for him to fall asleep, his nose buried in Clary's hair, and his body curled protectively around hers.


	12. Chapter 12

Jace felt someone in the room before he was fully awake, and when he was aware of that, his eyes flashed open, breathing in sharply through his nose. Maia's scent pierced through the sweet, baby smell of Sammy and comforting, familiar scent of Clary, and he let his muscles relax, barely moving so as not to disturb the two females next to him. Maia smiled at softly as she came around to the side of the bed where Sammy was fast asleep, one of her hands still wrapped around a couple of Jace's fingers. Maia didn't say a word as she picked up her daughter, and then looked between her Alpha and the red haired girl, who was fast asleep, both of Jace's arms around her, one under her neck, and the other over her side, where Sammy had been laying. She continued to look between them, a very pointed message behind her gaze, and Jace was tempted to flash his Alpha eyes at her, but after another minute, she rolled her eyes and left the room with her daughter, as silently as she had entered.

He looked around, to the windows where the curtains were drawn, but it was still clearly dark outside. He could hear birds outside, and there was a faint smell of early morning dew that he could picture settling on the grass and trees outside. So it was probably around five in the morning. It made sense that Maia would come in to get Sammy around the time, given the little girl usually woke up around five thirty like clock work.

Clary suddenly shifted and Jace froze, wondering for a fleeting moment if he should leave. But she rolled over, sliding one of her legs between his and burying her head into his chest, and making a sleepy noise.

Jace swallowed hard, stroking the fingers from one hand through her hair and then went back to sleep.

* * *

Clary felt as though she was in a furnace when she woke up, and she crinkled her nose in distaste. It wasn't an unusual thing, to be surrounded by heat when sleeping with werewolves, however when she had fallen asleep last night, there had only been a toddler in front of her, and one werewolf behind her. Now, as she opened her eyes and looked around, she could see that Jem had replaced Sammy—who must be with her parents now—and Isabelle had crawled in behind Jace. Max was awake, but he was lazily stretched out across the bottom of the bed, scrolling through his phone.

But that wasn't unusual.

Waking up to find that she was sharing her bed with multiple were's.

They were tactile, always drawn in by the scent and feel of others in their pack, always needing to be around each other.

"Aw, well why don't you look at that?" Magnus cooed from the doorway, waking the werewolves who were still asleep in the room, earning a growl from Isabelle. "Mummy and daddy and some of their pups, all sleeping in the same bed." Clary pulled the fingers at the warlock, trying to fight her blush. The pack teased her about being the 'pack mother' all the time, but it felt a little bit different when her and Jace were being called 'mummy and daddy' in the same breath.

"Fuck off, Magnus," Jace grumbled, and Clary could feel his breath against the back of her neck. Isabelle pulled the pillow out from under her head and threw it in Magnus' direction, but Clary already knew that any chance of her going back to sleep was long gone.

"You could at least start breakfast if you're gonna be an asshole and wake us up," Jem grumped, turning beside Clary and cuddling in closer to her.

"Alec has gone out to buy eggs," Magnus responded, not at all bothered by the annoyed vibe that was coming from the room, leaning against the door frame and checking his fingernails. "You lot go through them all and don't add them to the fucking shopping list—you know that it's not actually hard to write a four lettered word onto the big piece of paper on the fridge that says 'shopping list', right?" There was no answer from the room, and Magnus rolled his eyes at them. "Especially you two, Mr Growing Wolves," he waved his finger at Jem and Max—Max showing extreme maturity by poking out his tongue at the warlock.

"How long ago did Alec leave?" Clary asked, wondering how long she had before he returned and they started on breakfast.

"He's just getting back now," Jace sighed, and the arm around her waist seemed to tighten as an automatic response to the idea of her getting out of bed. Clary's stomach tightened as Jace's fingers burned like a brand against her skin, and she let her eyes close, her soft body relaxing against Jace's hard one. Sure enough, a minute later, even Clary's human ears could hear a car parking up outside, a signal that Alec was home. "Okay," Jace didn't sound happy. "Everybody up—Max and Jem?" The two younger werewolves looked toward their Alpha. "Magnus is right. When you finish the eggs, write them on the shopping list." They both nodded before the teenagers were scrambling out of bed and heading toward the door.

The pair of them were teenagers _and_ werewolves, and the amount of the food that they went through was ridiculous. While Clary wasn't there for every meal, she knew that they ate enough to feed a small army on a daily basis.

"Hey, Izzy?" Clary murmured, referring to the girl on the other side of Jace. "Where's Simon?" Isabelle took a few beats before answering, and Clary felt Jace turn slightly toward the dark haired girl, waiting for her response as well.

"He woke up early this morning," Isabelle said quietly. "I think he had a nightmare, he smelt scared and angry." Jace twitched and Clary didn't have to see his face to know that he was feeling guilty about the night before. "He's not mad at you, Jace," Isabelle sat up and looked down at her Alpha. "It's just the idea of that rogue being so close again is bringing back memories, and freaking him out." Clary's heart ached for her friend. "He went out for a run and he hasn't come back. He'll be okay, he just needs some time alone."

"He'll be back soon," Clary murmured reassuringly. "His stomach will force him back." Isabelle let out a snort and nodded.

"Good point," she agreed before making a loud noise as she stretched her arms above her head, arching her back and wiggling on the bed. "I'm gonna get up, make sure those boys don't burn down the kitchen." Isabelle got out of bed, only wearing a pair of underwear, once again demonstrating how unabashed the werewolves were with their nudity. She walked lazily out of the room, turning toward where her bedroom was. Clary felt the nervousness in her stomach again and looked over at Jace, who was staring at the ceiling.

"He's pissed off," Jace muttered glumly.

"No, he won't be," Clary replied as she sat up and slung her legs over the side of the bed. "He just wants to get his thoughts straight without all of you sniffing out his feelings," she tossed a teasing smile over her shoulder before she got up and walked over to the dresser where more than half her wardrobe seemed to be. She could feel Jace's eyes on her and she knew if she turned around, there would be nothing but appreciation and adoration showing on his face. That wasn't her being arrogant or full of herself, because being surrounded by werewolves who had perfect figures and unfairly smooth skin, she often felt inferior compared to them.

But Jace thought that she was beautiful, it would show on his face when he looked at her sometimes. It had taken her a long time to process what the expression on his face was, and maybe some knowing prompting from Aline and Lydia, and then she had figured it out. She was still confused by it, she didn't understand what he saw in her, but it did all sort of things for her confidence to know that a gorgeous man was at least physically attracted to her.

"What are you thinking about?" Jace asked in a low voice as she pulled out a pair of jeans from the dresser drawers and slid into them.

"Huh?" Clary mumbled, as she straightened up and realized the next part of getting changed was taking off her shirt. She had gotten changed in front of the pack a hundred times, but usually it wasn't just her and Jace, alone in a bedroom. She took in a breath, taking her shirt off and tossing it toward the chair beside her dresser, now standing in just a pair of jeans as she looked for a bra and shirt, her bare back to him.

"Your heart beat is going crazy," Jace murmured, his voice a whole lot closer than it had been before, and then she felt his heat against her back. Clary froze, his fingers drifting lightly down her arms, goosebumps breaking out over her skin and a shiver running through her as his hands rested on her bare hips. Jace leaned forward, his lips brushing against her bare shoulder, and she knew that he could see her breasts and that she was practically naked in front of him. His fingers on her hips tightened for a moment and then he turned his head, so that his face was pressing against the side of her neck. "We wouldn't be the pack we are today with you, Clary," he whispered, and she felt the graze of his teeth against her skin. "And I wouldn't be the Alpha I am without you." Clary felt a flood of pressure behind her eyes and she had to bite, hard, on her lips to stop them from falling open. It wasn't a kiss that he pressed against her neck, more a gentle bite where she could feel his fangs protruding, and then he was stepping away and leaving the room.

It took Clary a few minutes to calm herself down before she could finish dressing and go downstairs. Just as both she and Isabelle had predicted, Simon was back, looking a little shabby in sweatpants and a singlet that he must have been running in, but he gave Jace a smile when the Alpha put his hand on his shoulder. The house was full of life—loud and messy as the were's fought over who got the first lot of bacon, and who had to set the table.

Sammy was strapped into her high chair, waving her arms above her head, completely loving the hectic atmosphere around her. Isabelle dropped a kiss to Sammy's cheek, and Jem tickled her tiny kicking feet, before Jem and Max started pulling plates and utensils out of the cupboard. Isabelle walked over to Simon, snuffling her face into his neck, breathing in his scent to reassure herself that her partner was okay. Maia and Jordan were taking care of the scrambled eggs, Magnus was showing off and toasting all of the bread with a couple of flicks of his fingers and Alec was protesting that he didn't finish off the last of the orange juice when Jem confronted him. Jace was calm in the middle of all of his pack, his arms folded across his chest and leaning against the door frame, a serene smile on his face.

Clary grinned as she threw herself into the fray, nudging her way between Maia and Magnus to start on the bacon.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Pride Month, ya'll!

The tension in the house had completely gone by the time Clary left on Sunday night. It was after dinner by the time she left, and she made sure to drag Simon out to her car before she went, asking him how he was doing. They spoke in low tones, although if any of the werewolves wanted to eavesdrop then they would have been able to hear what they said, but they tended to have some good guidelines when it came to privacy.

"I'll be okay," Simon told his best friend. "It just...Kind of came as a shock that...That the Alpha apparently back in the area."

"I get that," Clary agreed, leaning back against her head rest. She had to admit that it had been playing in the back of her mind as well—the visual of the rogue werewolves's face when he had jumped in front of their car before they had spun off the road. She was trying to push it to the back of her head, and luckily she had had enough to distract herself with for the past couple of days that she didn't have much time to dwell on it. "Are you...Mad at Jace?" She didn't think he was, but she still had to ask.

"No," Simon shook his head. "I think that Alec is actually the one that's most pissed off at him," he snorted.

"But then Alec is always the one who's most pissed off," Clary interjected with a small upturn of her lips.

"There's that," Simon shot a smile at her. "Alec believes that everything should be out in the open at all times, and sometimes that's not always the best thing." Clary tipped her head to the side curiously, letting Simon continue at his own pace. "I mean, I _think_ I'm glad that Jace told us about the rogue being around again and attacking someone—at least that way we know to be on the look out—but...It still got me worried, and I know that it freaked out Jem. Poor kid. I can understand why Jace was worried about telling us."

"You know that the whole pack has your back," Clary murmured, reaching across the centre console and squeezed his arm. "I'm sorry if I overstepped, maybe I shouldn't have pushed Jace to tell you guys..."

"No," Simon shook his head. "It was a good thing. Besides," he grinned. "I doubt you really had to push him to do it. Jace will do anything if you just give him your pretty smile." Clary rolled her eyes at him and punched him lightly in the arm. "Anyway, I better let you go, it's already late and you have work in the morning."

"Ooh, now you're sounding like my mum," Clary rolled her eyes at him. "But you're right." She reached over and gave him a kiss on the cheek, and waited as he rubbed his cheek against hers, scenting her lightly before pulling back. "I'll see you later." Simon nodded and got out of the car, shutting the door behind him. As Clary reversed her car to turn it around, she noticed Jace standing on the deck of the house, watching her leave.

* * *

"You're distracted," Aline bumped her hip against Clary's hip.

"No, I'm not!" Clary protested. "I'm totally present here."

"Then maybe you should move onto the next plate," Aline gave her an amused smile as she looked at Clary's hands, which were buried in the soapy sink. The plastic plate that she had been cleaning was the same one she had been scrubbing for the past couple of minutes, and it was absolutely spotless. Clary poked her tongue out at Aline and put the plate on the drying rack. "Where's your head at?" Clary shrugged as she started soaking the next couple of plates, which were caked with mushed up peas and carrots from lunch. "You're not answering, which means you're thinking about Jace."

"Am not," Clary retorted.

"Are too," Aline smirked. Clary was tempted to pull the fingers at Aline, but they were at work, and even though a lot of the kids were asleep, there were still five of their older kids who didn't go down for a nap this late in the afternoon. "You and Jace...When is that properly going to happen, aye? You're goddamn perfect for each other."

"I..." Clary licked her lower lip as she stopped scrubbing at the plates and stared down at the water. "I don't know what's going to happen—I don't know if something ever will." Aline tilted her head to the side and frowned, putting a hand on her shoulder.

"Are you talking about everything that happened with his family?" She asked quietly and Clary nodded. "He doesn't compare you to her." As hunters, Aline's family was knowledgeable about most things that happened in the supernatural world. She knew most of the gory details of what happened between Jace and Camille and the rest of his family. "And he loves you—god, he loves you so much." Clary felt her stomach plummet at the word, and she felt as though her breath had been punched out of her lungs. "You can see it whenever you two are around each other, the way he looks at you, when—"

"Aline?" Clary cut her off, and something desperate in her voice must have been enough to make Aline stop. "I can't talk about this." Aline breathed in through her nose as her eyes flickered over Clary's face before she nodded. Clary gave her the smallest hint of a relieved smile before going back to the dishes.

It had taken Clary a long time to find out about Camille, and what she had done to Jace and to his family. From the first time she had met Jace, though, she knew that there was something that weighed heavily on his shoulders. There was a darkness behind his eyes and the way that he found it almost painful to open up to people. He had gotten a lot better now, since his pack had grown again and they had all shown him that they loved and cared for him, but he still held onto the guilt. Maybe about a year or a year and a half ago was when she first visibly saw him beginning to relax, letting the rest of his pack share his pain and help carry with it, and that was when he actually began to smile more freely. Even now though, he was self-sacrificing, and he cared so much about his pack, but didn't seem to feel as though he deserved the same extent of love back.

Clary felt detached for the rest of the day, her mind only half on her job while the rest of her thoughts were on Jace. Once their kids all woke up from their afternoon nap, that was a good distraction, but in the lull—when it was story time, and Lydia was making all the noises along with the animals in the book Aline was reading—her mind went back to Jace. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and tapped her thumb against the screen to look at her screensaver. It was of her, Jace, Jem and Isabelle, smushed together on an armchair with Jace on the bottom and the other three all piled on top of him. Clary, Jem and Isabelle were all laughing and grinning, and Jace looked as though he was trying to look serious, but there was a small smile on his face.

It was after their last child had been picked up and they were finishing their clean up when Lydia came over to Clary.

"Hey, have you heard from Jace?" She asked quietly.

"If this is about what Aline was going on about? Because I just don't want—"

"No, no," the blonde shook her head. "Charlotte called Jace, it's about one of the bodies that showed up at the morgue. She just text me to ask if you were going out there with him, and wanted me to remind you that you're human and not to get in the middle of it all." Lydia gave her a half smile, Charlotte's warnings like that of an over-protective mother, but Clary frowned.

"Go where? What has shown up at the morgue?" She was confused.

"Jace hasn't told you? He left Charlotte about twenty minutes ago, said that he was going to go straight out to follow up on a lead," Lydia tilted her head to the side.

"What's the body? Is it—" there was no one around except her and Lydia, but she lowered her voice anyway. "Does it look like a werewolf attack?"

"No, I don't think so," Lydia shook her head. "Although I don't know the details. I can call Charlotte if you want, ask her to tell you what she told Jace."

"No, it's okay," Clary responded as she picked up her handbag and her jacket, slipping it on. "Can you tell Aline goodbye from me? I'm going to head off."

"Yeah, that's fine," Lydia gave her a smile but the red head was already heading out of the day care. Charlotte worked at the police station, she was the medical examiner, and if she ever got bodies coming through that she thought had a supernatural element to them, she would get in contact with Jace. Most of the time Jace would tell the rest of his pack and they would all figure out who it was in their territory and get rid of them. But sometimes, especially when he was feeling guilty or responsible for his packs pain—like he was right now, in regards to the rogue werewolf—he would pull out the martyr act.

When she got into her car, instead of turning toward her own house, she began driving out toward the pack house, just outside of town. It wasn't five yet, and so Max and Jem might be home, and Maia probably would be, but she wasn't too sure about everyone else. She dialed Alec's number, putting her phone on speaker as she drove.

"Clary?" Alec answered.

"Has Jace called you?" She asked abruptly.

"No, what's going on?" Alec's voice dropped low, becoming more serious.

"Charlotte called him to the station because of a body that showed up—Lydia told me. It seemed as though Jace knew who he was going after because he said he was going out to follow up on some lead," she replied.

"By himself?" It came out almost like a growl.

"Guess so," Clary muttered.

"Go straight to the house," Alec told her. "I'm going to call Simon, we'll go after him."


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the wait, guys.  
> Life is crazy.

It turned out to be ghouls.

Clary was still having difficulty keeping up with all the new supernatural creatures that she was encountering on an almost monthly basis since finding out about werewolves, and ghouls were a new one. She was waiting back at the pack house with Isabelle when they heard a howl that signaled the boys were okay. Isabelle got a call a few minutes later from Simon, who told them that they were coming back, and that it was a pair of ghouls who had been feeding on the bodies in the morgue.

"What is a ghoul?" Clary crinkled up her nose.

"They can look like people, but they don't smell right," Isabelle said. "They generally feed on dead bodies, so Charlotte must have found a couple of bodies in the morgue that looked different now to when they originally came in. Once they've fed, they can start taking on the appearance of that person."

"That's fucking disgusting," Clary muttered.

"Yeah," Isabelle agreed with a shrug. "I mean, in the scheme of things, they're a whole lot less dangerous than some things we run into, but sometimes they do start feeding on people that are still living, and that's when you have to watch out. They're not technically 'alive' which is why they're a bit harder to kill, but Jace and the boys got it all under control."

"And by harder to kill, you mean..."

"They need to be decapitated," Isabelle responded simply as she walked into the kitchen.

"Who needs to be decapitated?" Maia asked with raised eyebrows as she walked in the front door, Sammy on her hip and Jordan behind her, carrying a couple of grocery bags.

"Ghouls," Isabelle replied.

" _Decapitated_?" Clary exclaimed, her eyes wide.

"Yes," Isabelle nodded as she pulled out a large pack of chicken.

"I love how you say that so casually. How is this my life?" Clary muttered, putting a hand to her head and threading her fingers through her hair.

"Wait, are there ghouls  _here_?" Maia frowned. Sammy made a couple of noises, waving her hands around and making grabbing motions with her fingers to Clary. The red head reached out and Maia passed her daughter over, her nose wiggling slightly. "You smell worried," she observed. "What's going on?"

"Jace took off to fight some ghouls on his own," Isabelle surmised. "He didn't let any of us know, just left. Clary only found out because Lydia mentioned it to her."

"Oh great, so he's off playing the lone ranger again," Maia sighed.

"Simon and Alec went after him, and they're on their way home now," Isabelle's eyes flitted over to Clary and the girl frowned.

"You're not saying something," she stated. Maybe she didn't have the nose of werewolf like the rest of them, and she couldn't sense the chemosignals like them, but she now knew these werewolves better than anyone else in the world, and they couldn't get away with lying to her. Not for long, at least. "What is it?"

"It sounded like Jace might have been hurt," Isabelle said and both Maia and Clary's eyes widened. "It won't have been bad, you know that he'll recover," Isabelle's words were directed more at Clary, who was still getting her head around the whole 'ghouls' concept, and now needed to process that Jace had been  _hurt_. "It's just I could hear some noises in the background, and it sounded like Jace." Clary sighed and shook her head, looking down at Sammy, who was playing with the thick braid that was hanging over Clary's shoulder, mumbling away to herself.

"I'll get started on dinner," Jordan announced. "Do we know where everyone is?"

"Max has a study group and Jem has a later shift at the butchers. They'll both be home in about half an hour—Jem is giving Max a ride home," Isabelle replied. "Magnus won't be home til late, so we'll just put a plate aside for him, but Simon and Alec are with Jace, and they'll be home—"

"Now," Maia concluded, obviously able to hear the boys approaching outside.

"Great, I'll start now," Jordan nodded and put the grocery bags he was holding onto the bench. Isabelle was still watching Clary as Maia moved to help her partner start on dinner for the pack. Clary was focused on Sammy, waving her fingers in front of the little girls face and letting her gnaw down on them, but when the door opened and Alec, then Simon, and finally Jace walked through, her gaze shifted upward. If Clary was a werewolf, Isabelle didn't doubt at all that her eyes would have flashed angrily when they settled on Jace.

Their Alpha had blood staining his clothes—specifically his shirt, mainly around the collar, and there was a bloody gash at the juncture of his shoulder and neck. It was already healing, almost completely gone, but it was still there faintly, and the blood was thick and clotting around the wound. Alec had an angry expression on his face, Simon just looked as though he wanted to take a shower, and then there was Jace, who looked annoyed, and bypassed the pack that was waiting for him and kitchen and wound his way toward the stairs up to his room.

"What happened to him?" Isabelle asked as Simon came over to give her a kiss on the cheek. Clary was already handing Sammy back to Maia and stalking up the stairs after the Alpha. Maia raised her eyebrows and looked over at Isabelle who made a face.

"Looks like mummy and daddy are going to get in an argument," Maia sung under her breath as she bounced her daughter up and down on her hip.

Clary followed Jace, knowing that he was heading straight for his bedroom. The door was still open, but she purposefully shut it behind her, knowing that if she left it open, then the rest of the pack would be able to hear, and as pissed off as she was at Jace, she knew that it wasn't her place to undermine him within earshot of his pack. There was water running in his adjoining bathroom and Clary tried to take in a deep breath to calm herself down, but he would already know how pissed off she was, he would be able to hear it her heart beat and smell it rolling off her skin.

"Clary..." Jace began as soon as she reached the doorway of the bathroom and clenched her hands into fists at her sides. He had taken his shirt off—or he had  _ripped_  it off, given it was in bloody sheds on the ground—and Clary had to narrow her eyes to try and keep her resolve when his muscled torso was on full display like that. It didn't matter how many times she saw him half naked—and sometimes even almost  _completely_  naked—it still caught her off guard. He was facing away from her, toward the sink where he was soaking a flannel, and the muscles of his back were flexing.

"You are  _not_  only responsible for  _yourself_  here," Clary began, her voice steely.

"Clary," Jace turned around, and then paused when he saw the furious expression on her face in the reflection of the mirror in front of him.

"I know that you're this big bad werewolf who heals faster than most people can tie their shoes, but that  _doesn't_  mean that you can just  _go off_  on these little missions on your own," she continued, stepping into the bathroom, her words coming out almost in a furious growl. "We  _rely_  on  _you_. We  _need_  you." Jace sighed and put down the flannel on the edge of the bathroom vanity. "You get these crazy ideas in your head that you need to prove yourself to us—that you have let us down and that you need to show us that you can still look after us."

"That's not it—"

"Don't you  _fucking lie_  to me, Jace Herondale," Clary hissed at him as she closed the distance between them and jabbed one of her fingers into his chest. His pectorial was solid, absolutely no give, and it hurt her finger more than it would have hurt him, but it helped to prove her point. "You went out there without telling  _any_  of your pack! Without telling your second in charge! Without telling  _me_!" Jace's eyebrows pulled together slightly at that comment. "I know that you're practically indestructible and you can deal with most things that come your way but  _you don't have to do it alone_. That's what a pack is for. And if something happened to you—" her words stuttered slightly at Jace's eyes softened as he stared down at the petite red head. "If something happened to you, I don't know what the fuck we would do. I don't—I don't know what _I_  would do."

"I don't want you to be angry—"

"Oh, I'm not angry," Clary snorted at him, her mouth twisted into a snarl of a smile. "I'm fucking  _furious_. I thought that we  _just_  established the other day that we were all in this together? And then the first thing that comes along, you take off? As far as I know, you've never lied to me before, don't you start now—oof!" She was cut off when Jace's eyes glowed red all of a sudden and his hand lashed out and wrapped around her wrist, jerking her forward.

"I've  _never_  lied to you," his voice was a growl, and Clary felt it run right through her body. "And I would  _never_  lie to  _you_ ," his eyes were still glowing red, and his voice was rumbling from his chest, and she couldn't help but shiver. Jace's nose twitched, and the scent of her arousal was thick and sudden and he couldn't help but react instinctively to it, the wolf inside him taking over before he could put it in place.

His lips covered hers, harsh and hard and Clary let out a squeak of surprise as she felt a hint of fangs pressed against her soft mouth. She wasn't scared of the fangs, it was just a shock, exactly like the kiss. His hand was so tight around her wrist that she knew it would bruise, but all she could think was that Jace's  _mouth was against hers._

_He was kissing her._

His teeth came out to nip at her lower lip, and then she felt his tongue pushing between her lips without waiting for her to try and catch up with what was going on, but the instant he tasted the sweet cavern of her mouth, the man seemed to catch up with the wolf half that had lunged toward Clary. It was over in a split second, Jace quickly pulling back and releasing her wrist, his mouth slightly open as though surprised by what he had done.

Clary gaped at him for a moment before pursing her lips together, anger surging back through her as her hand twitched at her side, half tempted to slap him. Instead, she turned around, and jerkily left the bathroom, and then the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.


	15. Chapter 15

"So what did you do?" Isabelle sat down opposite Jace and fixed her Alpha with a glare.

"I didn't do anything," Jace responded evenly. His heart beat was steady, which was usually an indication of telling the truth, but being a werewolf all of his life and always being surrounded by them had been enough to learn how to control certain things, stop it from skipping a beat, which would be an indication of lying. Isabelle knew this, however, and she continued to glare at him.

"You're lying," she stated. "What did you do?" Jace clenched his jaw and shifted his attention, looking into the lounge where Sammy was laying on her back, gnawing down on one of her teething rings. The toddler went through a ridiculous about of them, given how often her fangs dropped, and those easily pierced through the rings. Sammy had her head tipped backwards, her soft brown curls pushed against the blanket underneath her, watching the two adults behind her. Maia and Jordan had gone out into the woods for a run; Maia letting her wolf free and Jordan at her side, so they were left in charge of the little one. "It's been three days, and she hasn't been here. That's the longest time she's been away! You need to fix whatever happened between the two of you because it just doesn't feel right, here not being here—"

"You think I don't know that?!" Jace's words were a growl as he suddenly directed his gaze back toward Isabelle, and a glimmer of red flashed in his eyes. Isabelle faltered, her mouth closing, but there was still a defiant look in her eyes. He felt bad, but his wolf was angry. Not at her, but himself, because he knew that it was his fault.

For so long, his wolf had been whining and scratching inside him, wanting Clary. Wanting to love her and hold her because of the amazing person that she was, but he had held himself back.

When she had gotten so fired up the other day, her eyes sparking and colour high on her cheeks, and she had spat out that she was furious he had gone off without alerting their pack, without back up. And then she had gotten angry because after talking to her about the rogue Alpha, she had explicitly told him that he needed to trust them, to be more open, and then he had literally done the opposite by keeping this from her. Then she seemed to think that when he had agreed to try and be more open, that he had been lying.

His wolf had practically roared inside his chest, and he hadn't been able to hold himself back from reaching out to her, lunging forward to grab,  _needing_  her to understand that he hadn't lied to her, that he could  _never_  lie to her. Not to Clary, not with how much he meant to her. He could feel his wolf battling with his human self, his vision was red, and he was holding her wrist tightly—not enough to hurt her, but enough to stop her from being able to move away. For a moment, his human self was winning back control, but then he had caught her scent.

She wasn't scared or frightened or nervous about his wolf showing through, eyes glowing and fangs protruding from his gums. She was startled, still pissed off  _and aroused_.

There was no way he could reign his wolf in, and he had brought their lips together hard, so hard that he could feel the awkward click of their teeth together. He had pulled at her lower lip, and it had tasted so good— _she_  had tasted so good, even better than he had imagined. It was that realization that had made his body jolt, finally manage to reel himself back in, pulling away from her and loosening his grip around her wrist. Clary stared at him for a couple of beats, and he could hear her heartbeat going crazy in her chest. There were all sorts of emotions coming off her, and Jace couldn't tell which one was stronger, and then it seemed she had decided anger had won out, and she had left, without a word.

Jace had wondered if he should go after her, call out, but all he could do was lick his lower lip, thinking about how soft her mouth had been against his, already missing the pressure. His wolf wanted to run after her and drag her back into his room, so it was probably a good thing that he hadn't tried to go after her.

"You're thinking about her," Isabelle commented, although her tone wasn't as abrasive as it was before.

"Doesn't matter," Jace responded gruffly as he stood up and walked into the lounge, leaning down to pick up Sammy. The little girl giggled and patted her hands against his cheeks. She hadn't said any full words yet, but she strung letters together and they knew what she meant. The little werewolf recognized Jace for who he was, and she grinned up at him.

"Al-pa," she cooed, letting her eyes flash up at him. Jace forced his body to calm down, not wanting to distress the toddler. She was young and unable to separate emotions clearly, but she could tell when someone in her pack was upset, and because she didn't properly know how to process it, it would just upset her to the point of crying.

"You wanna go outside, sweetie?" Jace murmured. "Wanna go outside and play?" She nodded her head rapidly and Jace glanced back at Isabelle. "You coming?" She nodded, following after her Alpha and her pack mate.

* * *

Clary was it for him.

For his wolf.

Jace ran faster, his toes gripping the wet earth beneath him, clutching at the twigs and fallen leaves and crumbling dirt. The moon was high in the sky but it was mainly hidden by clouds, leaving only streaks of light to cut through the forest canopy layer. It was almost pitch black because of it, and the only reason Jace was able to see anything was because his eyes were glowing red, his supernatural sight letting him navigate with ease. He was letting his wolf take over as he ran, feeling the dirt beneath his feet, hearing the scrabble of a squirrel run up a tree as he approached at top speed, smelling traces of his pack as he passed through the forest. He could feel his face shift, his facial hair becoming coarse, his fangs elongating, and his heart beat changing, becoming a steady beating thud of a wolf rather than the quickened pace of a human.

He wanted Clary.

He wanted her so bad that sometimes it felt like his wolf might take over and claim her and he wouldn't be able to do anything to reign it in and take control.

He kept her close—closer than the rest of his pack, and they knew it. They didn't resent him for it, because they could all scent on him the way he felt about her. Love wasn't simple to read, it was complicated and a twine of a hundred different emotions all together. But once the signs were there, it was easy to see, for humans and especially for wolves. It could be seen and smelt a mile away when it came to Isabelle and Simon, Magnus and Alec, Maia and Jordan. And apparently also on him, toward Clary.

When they slept in the same room as each other, whether it was when the rest of the pack was there and they were puppy piled together on a mattress or when he was pushed up against her with his nose pressed to the back of her neck, her heart beat was the one that sounded like music in his ears. Her scent was the one that soothed him.

She was invaluable to all of them, even as a human she was strong and smart and her heart was twice as big as the rest of theirs. He wasn't sure if the pack would ever recover if they lost her—he wasn't sure if  _he_  would recover if he lost her.

And that was one of the primary reasons why he hadn't let himself act any further on his feelings. He definitely toed the line, that was a fact, but there was still this barrier that they both knew would change everything if they stepped over it.

Wolves didn't just casually date.

Sure, when they were younger, when they were teenagers, like Max and Jem, the attachments weren't quite as strong as when they were fully grown, but they still felt things stronger than normal teenagers. That was why Jace didn't encourage the boys to get too invested with girls past a couple of flings, because he knew how difficult relationships could be with humans who's feelings didn't run as deep.

When they got older, a lot of were's chose to just form a relationship with another were, or supernatural being, so that it wasn't as fleeting as some humans were, but others—like Isabelle and Maia—sometimes just let their hearts lead the way, even that was to a human.

After Camille, Jace had closed off his heart to almost everyone, and although he had never said it out loud, he had made a pact with himself that if he was going to fall in love, it would be with another werewolf. But even then, he didn't think it was going to happen again, at least not for a very long time.

Yet here Clary was.

Under his skin, sinking into his bones, wound around his heart.

Jace wasn't sure how long he ran that night, but by the time he got home, it was verging on dawn and his legs felt as though they were going to give out from underneath him—and it took him a long time to get to that point. He staggered up the stairs to his room, not planning on showering before falling onto his mattress. But at his doorway, he paused, looking across at the bedroom that was Clary's whenever she stayed with them.

It had been three days, and his wolf was whining inside him, missing Clary, missing the woman it saw as it's missing piece.

Jace changed his mind, stumbling into her room rather than into his, falling onto the bed and pulling the pillow in close to his face, breathing in her scent and then drifting into a broken sleep, an ache in his chest.


	16. Chapter 16

As the fourth day came around, it seemed as though the pack had decided that they had gone long enough without seeing Clary, given she hadn't been coming by the house. Max was late coming home from school, although that wasn't particularly unusual. Jace was in his study, working on some new architecture plans that he needed to send in, and he could hear Isabelle and Maia starting on dinner, although they were the only ones down there, other than Sammy. It wasn't like Jem or Max to miss dinner, and even though he could hear Jem's heartbeat in the house, he hadn't heard Max come in yet. Jace jogged down the stairs, dropping a kiss to Sammy's head where the little girl was sitting in her high chair, and squeezing Alec's shoulder and then looking around.

"Where's Max?" He asked. It was normal for Simon and Magnus to get home almost exactly on dinner time, although Magnus sometimes had funny hours since he had to work around his client's hours when it came to open houses.

"Simon is picking him up on the way home from work," Isabelle replied. "They'll be back soon." Jace nodded and took a drink out of the fridge, taking in a deep breath of the dinner that the girls were preparing. Maia brushed past Jace, and she paused to rub her cheek against his shoulder, giving him a small smile as she got plates out of the cupboard. The smile that she had given him looked as though it was meant to be comforting, and Jace knew that it was because his pack could still pick up that he was hurting.

"You went and saw her today," Jace commented as he took a sip of his drink. Maia nodded as she started setting the table. She'd had a shower, but Jace could still smell the extremely distinct scent of 'Clary' on the beta.

"Me and Sammy went over this morning, before she went to work," Maia replied, and Jace bit back his urge to ask if she was okay. Of course the red head was okay, all that had happened was that they had had a disagreement and she wanted some time to cool off, it wasn't as though she was sick or anything. Maia seemed to know what he wanted to ask though and she gave him another one of those small, soothing smiles. "She's fine, Jace," she said quietly. Jace nodded, thankful to the curly haired woman. He could hair the tell-tale rattle of Simon's ute approaching, and as it got closer, be picked up on both werewolves in the vehicle.

It was when they got out of the ute, that was when Jace was hit with a strong scent of Clary, neither of them having time to shower like Maia had. So that was why Max had been late back from school. It made sense, and Jace couldn't fault the young werewolf for wanting to go by and see Clary, given she was pack and being separated from pack was like missing a limb. Jace took in a deep breath, suddenly feeling a little shaky at being hit with such a strong scent of the woman, and he could see that Isabelle and Alec were watching him closely—he could feel their eyes on him.

"I think I'm going to go out for a run," Jace said abruptly, putting down the glass bottle he had pulled out of the fridge.

"Dinners going to be ready soon!" Isabelle protested.

"Just put some aside for me," Jace muttered, already starting out the back door, his wolf shift beginning to take over his face. Max and Simon walked in the front door a moment later, Max looking happier than he had all week.

"Hey, buddy," Isabelle sung out to her little brother as they came into the kitchen, Simon giving her a quick kiss on the cheek. "You feeling better?"

"Shit yeah," Max nodded, his smile then faltering, his nose twitching a little, and then the younger boy sighed heavily. "Jace isn't happy, is he?"

"It's okay," Alec nudged him with his elbow. "He's just missing Clary."

"I know," Max sighed again, crossing his arms over his chest. "Whatever happened between them, I hope they sort it out soon. It doesn't smell as good here with her gone." To a human nose, the house would smell exactly the same. But Clary's scent was part of what made up the scent of the pack, and despite it being over almost everything, it wasn't as strong it normally was. Maia made a sympathetic noise at the back of her throat and came over to stand next to Max, putting one arm around his shoulder and rubbing her forehead against his temple.

"They'll sort it out," Maia assured him.

"Who's sorting what out?" Jem asked as he came into the kitchen, obviously drawn by the smell of food. He took one look around the kitchen—the absence of Jace and the scent of Clary coming off Simon and Max—and surmised what the subject of conversation. "Jace and Clary. Right," he pursed his lips together. "Well, there's really nothing that we can do about it. They're both too stubborn to listen to anyone, so we just need to leave them to sort it out themselves!"

* * *

Jace made it a to a week.

That was six days longer than he thought he could make it, and he might even feel a little bit proud of himself if he didn't feel so nauseous. Werewolves didn't get sick, so it was a strange feeling, his stomach twisting and turning, but he knew that it was directly related to the fact that he was missing Clary. He had to be near her again, he had to see her, breathe in her scent.

So he went to her house.

For almost an hour, he waited outside. He was glad that he had gone at night, after the sun had set, because if people saw him standing partially hidden by the tree's opposite Clary's house, they would have probably called the cops. And rightfully so, really. He couldn't see Clary from his position, her curtains were all closed, but he tuned in to her heart beat, hearing it beat, comforting and familiar, and that was enough to get rid of the churning feeling in his stomach. When he felt as though he had proper control, he walked over to her house. Instead of using his spare key, he thought it would be better for him to knock, and he tapped his knuckles a couple of times against the door. Jace could hear Clary walking toward the door, her feet padding quietly on the floors, and there was a pause when she looked through the peephole before opening up the door.

"Jace," Clary's voice was low, careful.

"Clary," Jace's response was soft. Clary regarded him, and for a moment, Jace thought that she wasn't going to let him in. But then she stepped aside, giving him room to pass her, and then closed the door after he had come inside. He took off his shoes, and followed her into the lounge. The TV was playing at a low volume, and there was a book on the coffee table, tipped upside down to mark her spot. "I wanted..." Jace took in a breath through his nose. "I wanted to apologize...For the other day."

"What part of it?" Clary didn't sit down, wouldn't give him the upper hand if she sat down and looked up at him, folding her arms over her chest.

"I guess..." Jace pursed his lips. "I guess all of it. With going after the ghoul, though, I can't say I won't do it again." Clary's frown deepened, but she didn't look at all surprised. "But the kiss—" he smelt a rush of embarrassment and nervousness from Clary at the mention of that. "I'm sorry, and I won't do that again...I-if you don't want me to." Clary swallowed hard.

"That wasn't fair, Jace," Clary sounded angry, but she was hiding it well with her expression and her voice. Her voice was tight and low, and while she was standing with her shoulders squared, looking determined, she was meeting his eyes. "You can't just do that. Not when you know how I feel about you." Jace blinked rapidly at that, and his bewilderment must have shown on his face because Clary rolled her eyes and turned away from him, picking up the remote for the TV and turning it off before walking into the kitchen. "Don't play stupid, Jace. You  _know_  how I feel about you," she swallowed hard as she began to pack away her leftovers from dinner.

This wasn't a conversation that she had been prepared to have tonight, but since she had started, she might as well finish it.

She had resigned herself to the fact that everything was going to come to a head before they could both move on from the kiss, and even though she was anxious about the talk itself and what the outcome would, part of her was also relieved that everything was going to be out in the open.

"You know that I love you," the words were out before she could even think about stopping them behind her teeth. She heard Jace take in a sharp breath behind her, and she just kept on going, closing the fridge and turning around to look back at him, even though it was hard to meet his eyes. "You know that I love you, and I know that you can smell that on me, even if it's just the physical side of things."

"I—" Jace's wolf was getting worked up inside the golden haired Alpha, desperate to reassure the woman, but his human side just didn't know the words to say.

"I know that you have feelings for me," Clary continued. "I don't know if you love me, but you definitely feel something. But whatever you feel, it's not enough to make you act on it, because you've had a thousands chances, and you haven't done anything." That made both he and his wolf hurt, the idea that she didn't think his feelings were strong enough for him to want her. Because it was the absolute opposite of that. "The point remains, though, if you know how I feel and you still kissed me, even though nothing is going to happen between us—that's just not fair, Jace! And I can't just be around you if you're going to do things like—"

She was cut off when Jace let out a growl, his eyes red as he practically flew across the kitchen to smash his lips down on hers. They tasted just as good as last time—better, in fact—and and she felt perfect against his body, crowded between himself and the fridge. His wolf was howling with pride inside him, so glad to have her in his arms, and Jace had to be careful not to push the kiss too far because he still didn't feel as though he had proper control over himself when it came to Clary just yet. When Jace pulled back, Clary's breath was shaky and her eyes were still closed, and her mouth followed after his when he moved before she let her eyes open.

"You're wrong," he whispered, one hand coming up to trail a finger down her face, starting at her temple and tracing down her jaw and touching the corner of her lips. "I want this—I want us."


	17. Chapter 17

"You have no idea how hard it's been for me to try to keep my distance from you," Jace growled at Clary as he leaned in and buried his face in her neck, underneath her hair. He took in a deep breath, surrounding himself in the amazing scent that was just Clary, that was pack and home and love and  _Clary_ , and it felt as though everything that had been wrong in the world was suddenly right. "I just wasn't sure...I wanted to protect you—there can be a lot of shit that comes with being the partner of an Alpha and I just—I didn't want you to feel obligated to be with me, just because of your place in the pack. And I never wanted to risk the relationship that you had with the others."

"Jace..." Clary breathed out, and he could sense that she was aroused—that was heavy in the air—and happy, but she was still a little confused. "Jace, I'm already a part of the pack, nothing that happens between me and you will change that. And I know that it can make me more..." she was thinking, maybe doing that cute little thing with her nose where she crinkled it up, but Jace wasn't going to lift his head from her neck where her scent was the strongest. He could happily live with his face pressed against her neck, bathing in the sweet, comforting smell of the woman. "I know it can make me more vulnerable..." her voice was a little shaky, but Jace could tell it was because she was trying to keep herself in check because she was turned on, not because she was nervous. "But I'm already half of the token humans in our pack, so I'm already vulnerable."

"I know, I know..." Jace sighed, and he decided that he had probably spent enough time with his face pressed against her skin and pulled back to look at her face. Her eyes were big and her lips were red, so she must have been licking and biting on them nervously while she was speaking. "I guess I was also just...Scared. For me." Clary sucked her lower lip into her mouth, contemplating her next words.

"Because of Camille?" She asked softly.

"Because of Camille," Jace nodded. The ache in his chest when the girl who had stolen his family from him when he was young was still there, but it was nowhere near as bad as it used to be. The pack helped him move on with his life, creating another family to help fill that hole, and of course, Clary.

"You know I'm not her," Clary said, lifting her hand to rest it against the side of his face, her fingers stretching down over his jaw and her thumb resting gently against his cheekbone.

"I know that," Jace whispered, leaning his head forward so that they were sharing breath, warm against each others cheeks and lips. Their noses were so close they were almost touching, and Jace felt completely immersed in the red head, and the wolf inside him was practically purring with how happy he was right now. "You're...You're unlike anyone I've ever met Clary. And I..." he paused for a moment before taking in a deep breath through his nose and tipped his head down so that their noses brushed together. "I love you, Clary."

And then there it was.

A completely unfiltered flood of happiness, and a smile so bright that it was almost blinding.

Jace couldn't stop himself, he leaned back in and caught her mouth, and there was absolutely no resistance from her this time. In fact, Clary lifted herself up on her tip toes, one of her legs shifting and twining it's way around his thigh. This kiss wasn't just their lips coming together like it had been the last time. This time, with the way the red head seemed to be trying to climb him, the way she so unabashedly let out a whimper when one of his hands moved lower and lower on her back, Jace knew that he had the go ahead for  _so much_ more.

So he claimed her mouth, sinking his teeth into her lower lip and tugging at it, and Clary made another whimpering noise, her arms tightening around his neck, fingers tangling in his hair. Jace dropped his hands so that they gripped her hips, and he picked her up. Clary made a surprised sound, pulling away from his mouth to let out a short laugh as she shifted her grip around his neck, and then wrapped her legs around his waist, locking them at the base of his spine.

Jace knew that his eyes were flickering between gold and red, and from the way that Clary was shifting, rubbing the centre of her legs against his torso, he knew that she was just as aroused as he was. He kept his eyes open as he kissed her, not wanting to miss a single micro-expression that flickered across her face, or the way that her eyes rolled backwards when his tongue searched out the tips of her teeth and traced the top of her mouth.

"Bedroom," Clary panted at one point, tugging at the neck of his shirt, her pupils blown and her chest heaving up and down.

"Yeah," Jace knew that his eyes were blatantly glowing scarlet now, at the idea of climbing into bed— _her bed_ —with her. That was something that he had avoided for so long, even when he and a few of the other pack fell asleep at Clary's place, he was always careful never to sleep in her bed, always opting for the couch, because he wasn't sure if he would have been able to stop himself if he was that close to her most intimate room.

"And if you even think about being all gentle with me because I'm human, I'll fucking kick your ass," Clary hissed at him as he carried her into the bedroom, and it was everything he could do to stop his wolf from snarling in pleasure.

He knew that she was perfect for him.

And she just proved it over and over again.

Jace manhandled her onto the bed, laying her down and then stripping her quickly but carefully, because he knew that she wouldn't be happy with him if he ripped any of her clothes. Her underwear and bra were mismatched and adorable—a navy blue bra with little white polka dots and a pair of green underwear with a little bow—and he took a moment to just drink it in, how incredible she looked, her chest flushed and heaving and her lips reddened from his kisses.

"Bit unfair if I'm the only one who has lost their clothes," Clary arched an eyebrow at him, licking her lips slowly as she pointedly gave him a once over. Jace smirked at her before dropping off his jacket and then tugging off his long sleeved shirt. He could hear her heartbeat just getting faster and faster as he slid down his zipper, and when he was left in front of her in just his tight black briefs, it was so fast he could barely distinguish one beat from the next. The minute his briefs were on the ground, Clary was pulling herself up onto her knees to reach for him, dragging him onto the bed and pushing their bodies together. Her mouth began an assault on his chest, teeth biting at his pecs and at his nipples and slowly down his stomach.

"Shit," Jace grunted as she got closer to his cock, one of her hands digging her nails into the meat of his strong thigh. "Okay, I can't do that right now," he wrapped a handful of hair around his fist and pulled her head backwards. Clary's eyelids fluttered slightly at the tug but then opened her eyes again and looked up at him.

"Never known a guy to turn that down," she teased, although her voice was thick, so the tone was hardly picked up.

"Well, most guys haven't been waiting years just to taste those lips that they're close to exploding just after a couple of kisses," Jace retorted, and Clary rolled her eyes, but her cheeks went even pinker. Jace stole another kiss from her mouth, his tongue twisting with hers, her scent and her taste intoxicating him, setting his blood on fire. He pushed backwards, crawling on his knees onto the bed before he had managed to maneuver them so that he was sitting with his back against the pillows, shoulders against the headboard. Clary looped her arms behind her back, unlatching her bra, and then she kicked off her underwear before straddling his thighs.

"Always thought you would be the kinda guy who wanted to be on top," Clary quirked an eyebrow as he encouraged her hips forward until she was positioned right over him.

"Thought about this often, have you?" Jace lips curled upward, and Clary narrowed her eyes at him. He grinned widely before pulling open her bedside table and fumbling around for a moment before finding a condom.

"How did you know they were in there?" Clary asked.

"Max sometimes steals them from you," Jace stated. "I found him with a couple and asked where he got them from."

"Little bastard," Clary muttered as Jace ripped off the edge of the condom wrapper and rolled it over his cock. They both froze for a moment, eyes glued to each other. The casual conversation while in such a compromising position just oozed domesticity, and that was a little bit too familiar for their first time together. They seemed to decide simultaneously—silently—to just quickly move on, because Jace bucked his hips upward, filing Clary's tight heat where she was braced over him and sending her sprawling forward, hands grabbing onto his shoulders as the breath was knocked from her lungs. "Oh, shit," Clary gasped out as she buried her face in his neck.

"You feel so good, Clary," Jace managed to say through gritted teeth as he pounded into her, one hand at her lower back with the other splayed further upward, feeling her silky skin beneath his touch. It was almost impossible to stop his fangs from dropping and biting down hard into the soft skin of her shoulder. Instead, he nuzzled Clary's neck to the side, nose moving upward, just under her ear, where her scent was the strongest and his eyes were bleeding red. He was pushing into her so hard that his thighs were slapping against her ass, and her pale skin must have been burning with heat.

"God," Clary's arms were twined around his shoulders, her body jolting upward every time he thrust into her, and one of her hands was pulling at his hair. Jace knew his claws were scratching at her, not hard enough to draw blood but enough for her to know that it definitely wasn't his human fingernails rasping down her back, but she didn't say anything. In fact, she started rocking her hips downward to meet his thrusts, which were becoming more and more frantic. Her scent was getting stronger and she was beginning to tighten around him, and Jace's fangs dropped as the tension in his body tightened almost beyond the point of being able to bear. "Fuck, yes," Clary mumbled, and Jace was confused for a moment whens he moved a little to the side, before he realized that she was tipping her head to the side, exposing her neck to him, completely trusting him and his werewolf side to her vulnerable throat.

"Shit," Jace's words were slurred, and the act of her blatant faith in him, even though he himself was finding it difficult to control his wolf around her, was enough to send his orgasm crashing through him. He let his fangs scrape over her skin, and the feeling of her walls fluttering around him and her arousal suddenly rushing out combined with the scent of his own come smelt so good twisted together in the room.

It took a while for them to get their breath back, but then after cleaning up, Clary wound her naked body around him, smothering him with her scent, letting him bury his face in her neck.

It was everything he needed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yesterday was World Mental Health Day, or today is that day for a lot of you, the 10th.  
> Please be kind to each other, people have so much going on in their heads that just isn't obvious from the outside.  
> Much love xx

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you guys think :)


End file.
